In 2022, a reluctantly titled Billionaire gave away his $3BN company after seeing himself listed in Forbes magazine.

Yvon Chouinard who founded outdoor apparel maker Patagonia more than half a century ago hoped to create a new form of capitalism by transferring ownership of the billion-dollar company to a specially designed Trust.

Chouinard does not believe in socialism but rather, a new type of capitalism that retains hierarchy and makes greater change.

In a 2019 interview with Fast Company, he said: “You’ve got to reinvent capitalism altogether. It leads to a whole bunch of poor people and a few extremely rich people. Ultimately, capitalism is going to lose its customers. There won’t be anybody to buy the product because everybody is going to be so poor. The whole thing is going to crash before the next election, probably. We’re going to get another huge recession, and everybody’s going to lose out on their stocks. There we go again. It’s a system that’s got to change. The whole stock thing is dependent on growth. Look at Amazon. Amazon doesn’t make a profit. They don’t pay any taxes. Nothing. But they’re growing like crazy. It’s all growth, growth, growth—and that’s what’s destroying the planet. I’m dealing with that myself. We’re a billion-dollar company, over a billion, and I don’t want a billion-dollar company. The day they announced it to me, I hung my head and said, “Oh God, I knew it would come to this.” I’m trying to figure out how to make Patagonia act like a small company again.”

And that he did.

Less than a month into the New Year and the movement has been reignited by British Billionaire, Richard Branson. He today told LBC that despite successes of market capitalism, there is a danger that the UK public does not necessarily see it the same way.

Ahead of the UK’s first-ever rocket launch, Branson spoke of a lack of appreciation of entrepreneurship and private enterprise and described the term ‘billionaire’ as slightly demeaning as it implies entrepreneurs are only in it for the money.

It was seeing himself listed as a billionaire in a Forbes Index that last year led Yvon Chouinard to give away his billion-dollar company, but what might it mean for Branson?

The Virgin Founder wants entrepreneurs to be seen as change-makers and it seems like Chouinard, he wants to re-invent capitalism or at least the way in which the public perceives it.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Socialism on the other hand is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Neither ultra-high-net-worth-individual wishes to overthrow capitalism. They still believe in an individuals’ ability to create extraordinary wealth through entrepreneurship if that wealth is used to make a positive impact and with 2023 looking likely to turn Chouinard’s 2019 predictions into a reality, they might have to work quickly to make it happen.

Do you believe capitalism needs a new face?