Who Is the Superclass?

A few thousand people now hold unparalleled power over world affairs. The members of this group, which I call the "superclass," come from business, finance, politics, the military, the arts, the nonprofit world and other realms, including even "shadow elites" from terrorist or criminal organizations. Each member is set apart by his ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide. Each actively exercises this power and often amplifies it through the development of relationships with other superclass members. To be a member one has to hold on to power just long enough to make an impact, be it by leading a revolution or launching a revolutionary Web site.
 
Who are the members of this global elite and, more important, what is the nature of this group, how does it connect, and how is it changing? To help understand the answer to this question I compiled more than 6,000 names in a rough census, a snapshot of the tiny community of the most powerful people on the planet at this moment. Many are profiled or identified in the book.  However, to give you a few illustrations from that list, here are 10 samples drawn from the roster of today's superclass, prepared exclusively for NEWSWEEK and organized according to location, age, and profession:

By Region…

Asia-Pacific (The source of 33 percent of the superclass)
Fu Chengyu – CNOOC (China)
Kim Jung Il – Leader (North Korea)
William Ding Lei – NetEase (China)
Ho Ching – Temasek (Singapore)
Lakshmi Mittal – Arcelor Mittal (India)
David Yonggi Cho – Yoido Full Gospel Church (South Korea)
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah – Hizbullah (Lebanon)
Sonia Ghandi – National Congress Party (India)
Lou Jiwei – China Investment Corp. (China)
Prince Bandar Bin Sultan – National Security Council (Saudi Arabia)

European Union (28 percent)
Mike Turner – BAE (U.K.)
Josef Ackerman – Deutsche Bank (Germany)
Alexei Miller – Gazprom (Russia)
Pascal Lamy – World Trade Organization (France)
Richard Branson – Virgin Group (U.K.)
Silvio Berlusconi – Former prime minister (Italy)
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe – Nestle (Switzerland)
Josef Joffe – Die Zeit (Germany)
Michele Alliot-Marie – Minister of the Interior (France)
Bob Geldof – Musician (Ireland)

North America (21 percent)
Arnold Schwarzenegger – State of California
Ronald Sugar – Northrop Grumman
Jeffrey Immelt – General Electric
James Dimon – JP Morgan
Robert Zoellick – World Bank
Oprah Winfrey—Television personality, producer
Indra K. Nooyi – PepsiCo
Al Gore – Former vice president, Nobel Prize winner
H. Lee Scott – Wal-Mart
Gen. Mike Mullen – Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Latin America (12 percent)
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – President (Brazil)
Lorenzo Mendoza Gimenez – Empresas Polar (Venezuela)
Mario Molina – Nobel Prize winning chemist (Mexico)
Moise Safra – Banco Safra (Brazil)
Carlos Slim Helú – Telmex (Mexico)
Andronico Luksic – Banco de Chile (Chile)
Luis Alberto Moreno – Inter-American Development Bank (Colombia)
Genaro Larrea Mota Velasco – Grupo Mexico SA (Mexico)
Gustavo Cisneros – Cisneros Group (Venezuela)
Shakira – Singer (Colombia)