8.
Mikhail Prokhorov
Being president is by far the most important status a person could achieve in his lifetime and some billionaires try to obtain it, after years of successful businesses and millions of dollars in funding.
Europe has such an example, the owner of the NBA basketball team Brooklyn Nets and Russian national businessman Mikhail Prokhoro, who has a reported net worth of $9,5 billion.
For many years he dominated the Russian metal sector and gained stakes in every major company he ever lead, but in 2012 he decided to run for president after he resigned from all his positions in 2011.
But the election was a disaster for him, the independent candidate managing to score only 8 percent of the votes while Vladimir Putin had 63% of the total votes.
