The World's Most Powerful People

There are seven billion people on the planet. These are the 70 that matter.

What do the president of the United States, the Dalai Lama, a billionaire drug dealer and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg all have in common? They are all featured on FORBES’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People.

The ranking takes into account four factors. First, we measured how many people a person has power over. For a religious leader, like Pope Benedict XVI (#7), that would be the number of adherents, or Catholics, in the world. For a CEO, like General Electric’s Jeffrey Immelt (#28) we counted the number of employees.

Then we looked at the financial resources controlled by each candidate, whether that is revenues (for a company), GDP (for a country) or net worth (for a billionaire). Next we asked: Is a candidate influential in more than one arena, or sphere? This bumped up the ranking of people like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (#17), who is a powerful politician, a self-made media billionaire and a major philanthropist.

Finally, we gave consideration to how actively the candidates wield their power. This measure eliminated inactive heirs to great fortunes, semi-retired industrialists and former heads of state. In all, 70 people made the final list, one for every 100 million people on the planet.

Regaining the title of the World’s Most Powerful Man on this year’s list is President Barack Obama, who gave up the top spot last year to China’s president Hu Jintao (#3). Despite his current political weakness, Obama remains the head-of-state of the world’s largest, most dynamic economy, commander-in-chief of the planet’s deadliest military and, unofficially, the leader of the free world. Moreover, Hu’s relative power is decreasing as he starts giving up important political offices, including general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, to his successor Xi Jinping (#69).

In second place is Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, who is poised to regain the Russian presidency this year from his loyal underling president Dmitry Medvedev (#59). German chancellor Angela Merkel ranks fourth and rounding out the top five is Bill Gates, co-chair of the world’s largest charity, chairman of Microsoft and America’s richest man.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (#9) is the youngest person on the list at age 27, and the biggest gainer this year, jumping 31 spots from 40^th in 2010. Also moving up is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, who ranks 40^th, 26 spots higher than last year. Bezos, who is already the largest “e-tailer” on Earth, is now exerting increasing power over the publishing business through the Kindle and Amazon Web Services powers some the biggest sites, including Zynga and Netflix.

On the flip side, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama, fell twelve spots this year to 51^st after announcing that he plans to give up his position atop Tibet’s government in exile. The world’s arbiter of good taste, luxury purveyor Bernard Arnault (#65) of LVMH also took a tumble in the rankings, falling from 43^rd in 2010.

Two criminals made this year’s list. Joaquin Guzman Loera (#55), the billionaire head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, that operates with seeming immunity in Northern Mexico and Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar (#57), who heads an organized crime syndicate in Mumbai and is suspected of providing logistical and financial support for terrorists.

List is Given Below:

Rank	Name/Title	Organization	Age
1	Barack Obama President	United States of America	50
2	Vladimir Putin Prime Minister	Russia	59
3	Hu Jintao President	People’s Republic of China	68
4	Angela Merkel Chancellor	Germany	57
5	Bill Gates Co-Chair	Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation	56
6	Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud King	Saudi Arabia	87
7	Pope Benedict XVI Pope	Roman Catholic Church	84
8	Ben Bernanke Chairman of the Federal Reserve	United States of America	57
9	Mark Zuckerberg Founder	Facebook	27
10	David Cameron Prime Minister	United Kingdom	45
11	Sonia Gandhi President	Indian National Congress	64
12	Mario Draghi President	European Central Bank	64
13	Nicolas Sarkozy President	France	56
14	Wen Jiabao Premier	People’s Republic of China	69
15	Zhou Xiaochuan Governor	People’s Bank of China	63
16	Hillary Clinton Secretary of State	United States of America	64
17	Michael Bloomberg Mayor	New York City	69
18	Timothy Geithner Secretary of the Treasury	United States of America	50
19	Manmohan Singh Prime Minister	India	79
20	Warren Buffett CEO	Berkshire Hathaway	81
21	Silvio Berlusconi & family Prime Minister	Italy	75
22	Dilma Rousseff President	Brazil	63
23	Carlos Slim Helu & family Chairman	Telmex	71
24	Rupert Murdoch CEO	News Corp.	80
25	Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister	Israel	62
26	Ali Hoseini-Khamenei Grand Ayatollah	Iran	72
27	Michael Duke CEO	Wal-Mart	61
28	Jeffrey Immelt CEO	General Electric	55
29	Zhou Yongkang Secretary of the Commission for Political and Legislative Affairs	People’s Republic of China	68
30	Sergey Brin Co-Founder	Google	38
30	Larry Page Co-Founder	Google	38
31	Ali Al-Naimi Oil Minister	Saudi Arabia	76
32	Rostam Ghasemi President	Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)	47
33	Lou Jiwei Chairman	China Investment Corporation	60
34	Ashfaq Parvez Kayani Chief of Army Staff	Pakistan	59
35	Mukesh Ambani Chairman	Reliance Industries	54
36	Masaaki Shirakawa Governor	Bank of Japan	62
37	Kim Jong-il Supreme Leader	North Korea	69
38	Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General	United Nations	67
39	Christine Lagarde Managing Director	International Monetary Fund	55
40	Jeff Bezos CEO	Amazon	47
41	Jamie Dimon CEO	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	55
42	Robin Li CEO	Baidu	42
43	Lloyd Blankfein CEO	Goldman Sachs	57
44	Li Ka-shing Chairman	Hutchison Whampoa Limited	83
45	Charles Koch CEO	Koch Industries	76
45	David Koch Executive Vice President	Koch Industries	71
46	Rex Tillerson CEO	ExxonMobil	59
47	Lakshmi Mittal Chairman	ArcelorMittal	61
48	Recep Erdogan Prime Minister	Republic of Turkey	57
49	Robert Zoellick President	World Bank Group	58
50	Bill Clinton Former President	United States of America	65
51	Dalai Lama Dalai Lama	Tibet	76
52	Larry Fink CEO	BlackRock	59
53	Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan President	United Arab Emirates	63
54	Bill Gross Co-Founder	PIMCO	67
55	Joaquin Guzman Loera Drug Trafficker	Sinaloa Cartel	54
56	Ahmed Shuja Pasha Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence	Pakistan	59
57	Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar Leader	D-Company	55
58	Tim Cook CEO	Apple	51
59	Dmitry Medvedev President	Russia	46
60	Masayoshi Son CEO	SoftBank	54
61	Azim Premji Chairman	Wipro Limited	66
62	Yoshihiko Noda Prime Minister	Japan	54
63	Joseph Blatter President	International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)	75
64	Jill Abramson Executive Editor	The New York Times	57
65	Bernard Arnault Chairman	Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH)	62
66	Sebastian Pinera President	Chile	61
67	John Boehner Speaker	United States House of Representatives	61
68	Jacques Rogge President	International Olympic Committee	69
69	Xi Jinping First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Party	People’s Republic of China	58
70	Alisher Usmanov Oligarch	-	58