Howard W. Buffett. Image via Wikipedia

This post is part of an ongoing effort to identify the people, places, ideas, products and companies that are poised to become central to the global conversation over the next six to nine months.  Click here to nominate your own “name.”  The best will be featured in an upcoming issue of Forbes magazine.

Warren Buffett is no fan of inherited wealth, calling the children of rich dynasties “members of the lucky sperm club.” He’s not planning on leaving much of his fortune to his family, either: more than 99% will go to philanthropic causes. It’s a good thing, then, that the youngest member of the Buffett clan seems to have inherited the industrious gene from the Oracle of Omaha.

At 27, Howard W. Buffett — the W stands for Warren — couldn’t get much further from the ‘spoiled heir’ cliche if he tried. Rather than attend galas and sunbathe on yachts, the billionaire investor’s grandson has forged an impressive career in public service. His resume reads like a liberal arts undergraduate’s wish-list: a BA at Northwestern, then a Master’s at Columbia’s Public Affairs school, followed by a coveted gig on Barack Obama’s campaign team in 2008 (as my colleague Luisa Kroll points out in the comments below, being the grandson of a major Obama supporter and adviser can’t have hurt his job prospects). After a stint at the Department of Agriculture, he started work at the White House as a policy adviser to Obama, then moved to the Department of Defense. Until recently, he’s been responsible for the department’s development of agriculture in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So far, so rigorous (and entirely unglamorous, unlike some kids and grandkids of the very wealthy). Now, young Buffett has left Washington, D.C. to return to his family’s beloved home base, Omaha, where he’s living on a soybean farm. He’s just been appointed as executive director of his father’s foundation, where he’ll use his public policy know-how to promote growth in developing countries.

An interview with the Omaha World-Herald on Friday makes it clear this is no vanity job. The youngest Buffett will have to work for his salary — in fact, he was meant to be earning far more, but his father cut the $135,000 earmarked for the role down to $95,000, saying: “He’s young, and although I think he would be worth anything we paid him, right now I just feel that’s a more appropriate number.”

His new gig puts to rest recent rumors in D.C. circles that he’ll run for Nebraska’s 2nd District seat in Congress in 2012. However, he told the Omaha World-Herald that he’s considering a move into politics after his two-year appointment ends. Buffett 2016? By then, he’ll be practically ancient at age 32.

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Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

“It’s not every day we give away a billion dollars,” Bill Gates said this morning in London, when he announced — to a whooping and cheering audience — that he’ll be giving that sum to help vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries against preventable diseases.

Gates made the $1 billion pledge at today’s Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation summit (GAVI), a partnership between his foundation, the World Bank, and a handful of governments, charities and businesses.

The Microsoft founder is already the most charitable person on the planet, having gifted $28 billion to his Gates Foundation to date, and creating the Giving Pledge with friend Warren Buffett to spur fellow billionaires to follow suit.

In his speech as GAVI host, Gates said he was stunned to hear half a million children a year were being killed by the rotavirus infection, a preventable form of gastroenteritis. The $4.3 billion total pledged today by Gates, Britain and other countries will provide a rotavirus vaccine and others “that rich kids take for granted” to children worldwide over the next five years, Gates said.

See the video of Gates announcing his $1 billion pledge below.

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Kenny Troutt (left) and co-owner Bill Casner celebrate their horse Super Saver's Kentucky Derby victory in 2010.I mage by Getty Images North America via @daylife

Sports speculators are gearing up for this Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, the last of the annual Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse races. Like any high-risk, high-stakes activity, horse racing draws its fair share of the super-rich, and not just those looking to make a few bucks betting on likely contenders. Some of the power players on the Forbes Billionaires list own and breed thoroughbreds, attending bloodstock auctions to select future winners and becoming familiar figures behind the scenes at both stud farms and race tracks.

Click here for a full photo gallery of the richest people in horse racing.

The ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is perhaps the best known billionaire in the world of thoroughbred horse breeding and racing. His presence at horse auctions is met with hushed reverence — and an intimidating team of bodyguards. Known simply as ‘Sheikh Mohammed’ in racing circles, he is thought to be the biggest spender in the history of the sport, buying up stables in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S. Four horses linked to the Sheikh’s various stables have won the UK’s Epsom Derby: Lammtarra, New Approach, High-Rise and Shaamit. He has yet to win a Kentucky Derby, but continues to chase that goal.

In the U.S., Excel Communications founder Kenny Troutt is the most high-profile billionaire in the horse racing game thanks to an incredible year in 2010. His colt Super Saver won the Kentucky Derby and his stallion Drosselmeyer nabbed the Belmont Stakes. Troutt owns Winstar Farm in Versailles, Kentucky.

France’s Alain Wertheimer and his brother Gerard, co-owners of fashion house Chanel, are third generation horse owners and breeders. Their thoroughbred business Wertheimer et Frere (meaning Wertheimer and Brother) has produced champs like Goldikova, the only horse ever to win three Breeders’ Cup Mile races. In 1993, their horse Kotashaan won American Horse of the Year, one of the sport’s highest accolades.

Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, one of the heiresses to the Campbell Soup fortune, runs Pennsylvania’s Iron Spring Farm. Over the past three decades, she’s imported stallions from Germany, Poland and the Netherlands for breeding purposes, and it’s paid off: her horse Judgement is the most successful American-bred jumper ever, earning over $1.5 million in prize money.

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Click for full photo gallery: Triple Crown Billionaires

Malone’s cousin and fellow Campbell Soup heiress Charlotte Colket Weber also runs a stud farm: Live Oak, in the thoroughbred town of Ocala, Florida. Her most successful horses include Miesque’s Approval, winner of the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs in 2006. On her website, Weber notes that two of her top horses, half-brothers Solar Splendor and Sultry Song, both won races on the same day in 1992 at New York’s Belmont Park.

Billionaire founder of storage giant Public Storage Bradley Hughes owns Lexington, Kentucky’s Spendthrift Farm. The stable has been home to winners of every Triple Crown race, including 9 Kentucky Derby victors. Hughes is a familiar and well-liked figure on the thoroughbred circuit, attending many sales himself to bid on the best bloodstock.

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair had an impressive breeding and racing career before selling his massive Kentucky-based Stonerside Stable to Dubai’s royal family, including Sheikh Mohammed, in 2008. The sale was said to include more than 80 racehorses and 170 broodmares. In the 1990s, a colt he co-owned, Strodes Creek, placed second in the Kentucky Derby and third in the Belmont Stakes.

Low-profile Brazilian banker Julio Bozano is a devout thoroughbred horse owner, and reportedly keeps 300 mares at several farms in Argentina, Florida and Kentucky. Some of his race-winning thoroughbreds include Quite a Bride, Pommes Frites, Palladio and Quelle Surprise.

Click here for a full photo gallery of the richest people in horse racing.

Walter Haefner is one of Switzerland’s richest men, and the largest individual shareholder of IT giant CA (Computer Associates). His Moyglare Stud Farm in Ireland boasts a number of major race-winners, including Go And Go, who won the Belmont Stakes in 1990. Now 100 years old, Haefner has since transferred ownership of Moyglare to his daughter.

One of the heiresses to the $14 billion Tetra Laval packaging fortune, Swedish billionaire Kirsten Rausing runs Lanwades Stud in Newmarket, England. On her website, she says her team has bred and raised winners of more than 795 races since 1999.

Texan banker Gerald J. Ford owns Diamond A Farms in Kentucky. His thoroughbred Pleasantly Perfect is the fourth richest American horse in terms of career earnings, bringing in over $7.8 million. Big wins have included the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Classic and the 2004 Dubai World Cup.

Australian retail magnate Gerald Harvey now owns 100% of Magic Millions, a thoroughbred auction house on Australia’s Gold Coast, having bought out his business partners earlier this year. He personally owns some 1,000 horses at the Vinery, Baramul and Broombee stud farms in New South Wales and recently bought two New Zealand stables in an effort to break into the Kiwi thoroughbred business.

Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach owns Magna International, North America’s largest racetrack operator. He’s in the horse racing game himself: his Stronach Stables has produced winners of the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, and his horse Ghostzapper won the coveted Breeder’s Cup Classic in 2004.

Sadly, one of the most beloved figures in the U.S. horse racing scene passed away earlier this year. California billionaire winemaker Jess Jackson was a regular fixture at bloodstock auctions and racetracks. Last year, I spent three days in Saratoga Springs shadowing Jackson’s thoroughbred agent for a Forbes story. It was clear he’d earned the respect of his peers as an owner and a breeder. His Stonestreet Farms stable is home to Curlin, the all-time top earning racehorse in North America with over $10.5 million winnings, and Rachel Alexandra, the first filly to win the Preakness Stakes in 85 years and 2009 Horse of the Year.

Click here for a full photo gallery of the richest people in horse racing.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Alec Baldwin is considering a move from 30 Rock to City Hall. A friend of the actor told The Daily that Baldwin believes he has a chance to win New York’s 2013 mayoral race now that Congressman Anthony Weiner “appears to have sexted himself out” of the competition.

Baldwin’s rep Matthew Hiltzik told Forbes that a run at the city’s top office is certainly not out of the question for Baldwin, a lifelong Democrat from Long Island. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” Hiltzik said.

The star has only one season of hit comedy 30 Rock left on his NBC contract, and said in a recent interview that he’d like to “try something different”, perhaps outside of show business. When he sat down with CNN’s Eliot Spitzer earlier this year, he discussed the possibility of a run for some sort of political office, citing his middle-class upbringing as an alternative to the current crop of leaders:

“I don’t want to say this in an anti-elitist way, but we’ve had men who are Ivy League groomed running this country since 1988. We’ve had 22 years of Yale and Harvard running this country right now, and the problems aren’t getting solved.”

Baldwin has also gone on the record criticizing current New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a 2008 column for HuffPo, he questioned billionaire Bloomberg’s massive spend on his first two campaigns and asked whether his successful bid for a third term was fair:

New Yorkers need to get to know some of the other good people working in the five boroughs, some of them perhaps not wealthy enough to spend $160 million of their own money for a PR makeover, but who nonetheless might make an effective public servant. The mechanism by which they could do that is called an honest election, something that Bloomberg and his lackeys in the Council believe New Yorkers neither need nor want.

UPDATE: This afternoon Baldwin himself took to Twitter, adding fuel to the fire with an infuriatingly vague neither-confirmation-nor-denial: ‘@AlecBaldwin: It’s a long way till November of 2013′. Watch this space.

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Miuccia Prada

When Italian fashion house Prada lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 24, the husband and wife team at the top of the company stand to make as much as $5 billion — each.

Miuccia Prada, creative director and granddaughter of the company’s founder, owns a 33.2% stake in the firm, as does her husband, CEO Patrizio Bertelli. The fashion house plans to float 16.5% of its share capital, hoping to raise $2.6 billion. If Prada’s shares sell toward the high end of the indicative price range, the company will be valued at over $15 billion, making Miuccia Prada and Bertelli almost $10 billion with their combined stake.

This means Bertelli will make his debut on next year’s Forbes Billionaires list, while Miuccia Prada will rejoin our annual round-up of the world’s richest after falling off in 2007, right as the fashion industry hit rock bottom and the recession set in. Now, the two will join designers like Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani in the billionaires club.

Miuccia Prada is widely credited with revamping the image of her grandfather’s brand, once a staid leather goods line. In 1985, she introduced the now-iconic black nylon Prada handbag, adding a ready-to-wear women’s collection four years later. In the 90s, Prada became synonymous with understated, clean-cut elegance, with celebrities wearing Miuccia’s designs on the red carpet. The 2003 novel and 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, about the perils of working at a fashion magazine, made the brand a household name in the US.

Prada will only be the second high-profile European luxury brand to go public in Hong Kong, following the success of French cosmetics firm L’Occitane’s IPO last year. Earlier this year, I traveled to Paris and Provence to meet L’Occitane chief Reinold Geiger, an Austrian former ski champ and packaging industry exec who became a billionaire after taking the beauty chain public. At the time, he said floating on the Hong Kong exchange was the obvious choice for the company despite its European roots: half of L’Occitane’s sales are now in Asia, with that percentage growing annually. Prada appears to be aiming for the same strong position in Asia. Last year, in an interview with the FT, Bertelli explained his reasons for considering a Hong Kong listing:

“Going to the bourse could be a solution, and if the bourse represents a market, then we should go to a bourse where things are happening.”

Hong Kong is just that bourse for luxury brands, with handbag designer Coach reportedly looking to make a secondary listing on the exchange and high-end luggage line Samsonite preparing to float later this month.

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