King Salman most powerful Arab personality

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman has been chosen as the most powerful personality in the Arab world. Also, King Salman ranks 14th in the Forbes magazine’s list of influential personalities in the world published on Wednesday. For the third year in a row, Forbes ranked Russian President Vladimir Putin as the most powerful person in the world, putting him above Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama. “Putin continues to prove he’s one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants,” the magazine said. Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world according to Forbes, has risen from fifth place last year to second place in 2015. Her strong stances when dealing with the influx of Syrian refugees and the Greek financial crisis brought her up to the new level. Barack Obama wasn’t so lucky this year, giving way to both Putin and Merkel and coming in third. In the closing stages of his second term in office, Obama is losing influence and power. However, Forbes still lauds the United States as “the world’s greatest economic, cultural, diplomatic, technological and military power.” “The men and women who are featured on Forbes’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People are the 0.00000001% – the global elite whose actions move the planet. These heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs truly run the world,” the magazine says in describing its list. Forbes considers hundreds of candidates from various spheres and bases its decision on four criteria. The first is whether the person has influence over lots of other people. A good example here is Pope Francis, who is regarded as a spiritual leader by more than a billion people, and thus came in fourth. The second criterion is the financial condition of a candidate. Heads of state were compared according to their countries’ GDPs, and CEOs by their companies’ revenues. Personal financial assets were also taken into consideration, which obviously helped Bill Gates secure sixth place. — SG