Bezos set to lose top slot to Gates

Jeff Bezos is at risk of losing the title of world’s richest person to Bill Gates, as Amazon.com Inc. stock slid on Friday.

Shares of the biggest online retailer fell 4 per cent to $1,712 at 9:45 a.m. in New York, a day after reporting its first profit decline in two years. At that price, Bezos has a net worth of $107.1 billion, about $300 million less than Gates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bezos took the top spot from the Microsoft Corp. Co-founder in October 2017.

Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, has surged 38 per cent this year, boosting the value of Gates’s one per cent stake and bringing his fortune to $107.4 billion.

The rest of his wealth is derived from share sales and investments made over the years by his family office, Cascade. Gates, 63, remains an aggressive stock investor, with more than 60 per cent of his portfolio in equities.

Bezos, 55, would have had no trouble retaining the top ranking if he and MacKenzie Bezos hadn’t divorced. MacKenzie, 49, received a quarter of their Amazon holdings in July.

Gates, on the other hand, may have never relinquished the top spot were it not for his philanthropy. He has donated more than $35 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 1994.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world’s richest people. Details about the calculations are provided in the net worth analysis on each billionaire’s profile page. The figures are updated at the close of every trading day in New York.