The first $200billionaire, his ex on £50bn... and a Briton set for £700million payday
He went through the most expensive divorce in history just last year.
But despite the costly end to his marriage, it’s safe to say amazon founder Jeff Bezos isn’t going to be on the breadline any time soon.
The tycoon, 56, has become the first person ever to amass a fortune of 200billion dollars (£151billion), according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. already the richest man in the world, Mr Bezos has seen his wealth expand by 87billion dollars (£66billion) this year alone.
The rise in his company’s value have also seen his ex-wife, MacKenzie scott, cement her place as the world’s second richest woman after she was given a quarter of his amazon stocks when the pair divorced last year.
The bonanza comes after an extraordinary surge in the share prices of america’s technology giants this year. Despite the coronavirus pandemic hammering traditional businesses, lockdown measures have driven more customers towards internet services run by the likes of amazon, Facebook, apple, Google, Netflix and Microsoft.
another winner from the shift towards online spending is British shopping tycoon Matthew Moulding. Mr Moulding – boss of e-commerce firm The Hut Group – is set to float his business on the stock market. He
‘Largest fortune ever amassed’
will receive £700million in shares if he meets growth targets by 2022.
Mr Bezos’s fortune is now worth nearly as much as the entire annual economic output of Greece or New Zealand. It is also more than the value of Britain’s most valuable company, Unilever – worth £119billion.
Business magazine Forbes, which tracks the minute-by-minute worth of the world’s billionaires, said: ‘even adjusting for inflation, Forbes believes Mr Bezos’s fortune is the largest ever amassed.
‘The person to come closest is [Bill] Gates, who was the world’s first-ever centibillionaire.’
a ‘centibillionaire’ is the name given to the very few people in history who have amassed wealth of more than 100billion dollars (£75.7billion).
The Forbes article went on: ‘Near the height of the dot-com bubble, when Microsoft reached its thenpeak in 1999, Gates’ net worth surpassed 100billion dollars, roughly 158billion dollars [£119.6billion] in today’s dollars.
‘Bezos would be even richer had he not gone through the most expensive divorce settlement in history last year. When he split from ex-wife, MacKenzie scott, last July, he agreed to give her 25 per cent of his amazon stake, a chunk of stock now worth 66billion dollars [£50billion].
‘even after giving away 1.7billion dollars [£1.3billion] in charitable gifts earlier this year, scott is currently the world’s 14th richest person and second richest woman, behind l’Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers.’ amazon raked in an astonishing £750million per day on average from april to June – or £68billion overall – as people stuck indoors because of the virus turned to online shopping.
‘as many companies are falling by the wayside, the tech stalwarts continue to gain muscle and power,’ said Daniel Ives, the boss of California-based research firm Wedbush securities.
Mr Bezos, who has four children with ex-wife Mrs scott, started amazon from his garage in seattle 26 years ago, selling only books to begin with.
He has since built it into a £1.7trillion behemoth that spans everything from groceries to streaming services.