Billionaires who’ve prospered in the pandemic
£72bn £43bn £93bn £77bn £59bn £19.7bn
NOT everyone is feeling the pinch as the pandemic wreaks havoc.
The wealth of some multi-billionaires has soared even higher during the crisis. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the
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IN MARCH world’s most affluent person, became £10billion richer on Monday.
It is thought to be the largest ever single day jump in someone’s wealth.
Here we look at whose fortunes have leapt during the lockdown.
Reason for rise? Facebook’s share price has soared to £520bn during the lockdown. More than three billion people are using Facebook and offshoots Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every month, while in areas hit hardest by the virus, usage has leapt more than 50%.
The surge came despite some major companies pulling advertising for July over claims the site was too slow to remove hateful content.
The estimated £29bn rise in founder
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune, on paper, is more than the size of Latvia’s economy.
Who is he? Zuckerberg started Facebook aged 19 at Harvard University for students to match names with photos of classmates. The social network now employs almost 50,000 people globally.
Family life: Zuckerberg, 36, and wife
Priscilla Chan have two daughters.
Homes: At least 10 around the world, including several in California and one in Hawaii.
Mark and Priscilla
Drives a £23,000 Honda Acura TSX and shuns superyachts and designer clothes. The couple pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake over their lifetimes.
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IN MARCH
Our story on Bez’s £10bn boost
Reason for the rise? Partly his stake in Microsoft, with the software giant powering through the pandemic and now worth nearly £1.3trillion. If the £16bn rise was in bank notes it would be three times heavier than a cruise shop. Who is he? He is a business chief and philanthropist who dropped out of college to start Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen.
Family life: He married Melinda French in 1994 and they have three children.
Homes: Their homes include Xanadu
2.0, a £100m lakeside mansion in
Medina, Washington state in the US. It has a 60ft swimming pool (with underwater music system), a 20-seat cinema room and a garage for 23 cars. The sand for the beach is said to have been shipped from St Lucia in the Caribbean.
Lifestyle: Bill and Melinda Gates co-chair the charitable foundation bearing their names. The couple have donated massive sums to good causes.
This includes £240m to boost the search for vaccines and treatments in the battle to bring the pandemic under control.
RICH Bill Gates and wife Melinda
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IN MARCH
Reason for rise? A string of strong results has put the value of Rocket Man Musk’s electric car company Tesla into overdrive, rocketing 270% since March.
It means the firm is worth £230billion, more than Ford, Ferrari, General Motors and BMW combined.
Founder Musk is now the world’s fifth richest person and in line for a £1.7bn share payout.
Who is he? Born in South Africa, the young Musk was an avid reader. He was bullied at school, once being put in hospital for a week.
The computer whizkid made a packet by selling a company aged 27.
He later set up Space X, with the aim of colonising other planets.
Family life He was married to author
Justine Wilson for eight years.They had six children. After their split he married English model Talulah Riley in 2010.
They split in 2012, remarried in
2013 and divorced again in 2016. Past girlfriends include Amber Heard, now in a legal fight with her ex Johnny Depp.
He is now with musician Grimes, with whom he has a son the couple named X AE A-XII Musk.
Homes Musk owns a string of lavish homes though he tweeted in May: “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
Elon and wife Grimes