So, last year wasn’t ALL bad (if you’re a billionaire)
86% of them got even richer as club swells to record 2,755
THE coronavirus pandemic may have sent economic shockwaves around the globe – but the world’s wealthiest won’t be tightening their purse strings any time soon.
in fact there are now more billionaires than ever before after the richest people on the planet added a staggering £3.7trillion to their fortunes.
The number of billionaires has surged by 660 to a record 2,755, according to business magazine Forbes. They are worth a combined £9.5trillion, up from £5.8trillion last year.
Overall, 86 per cent of all billionaires have become richer in the past year. And there were 493 newcomers – meaning a new billionaire was minted every 17 hours.
Randall Lane of Forbes said: ‘The very, very rich got very, very richer.’
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos topped the rankings for the fourth year in a row, increasing his fortune to £128billion – a rise of £46billion.
elon Musk, the boss of electric car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, came second with a net worth of £109billion – up from 31st place last year.
The 49-year-old, who has a son with singer-songwriter grimes, has seen his fortune surge by an astonishing £91billion from last year.
Bernard Arnault, the boss of luxury goods firm LVMH, came in third while Microsoft founder Bill gates and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg came next among the world’s wealthiest.
For the first time in two decades, however, Wall Street investor Warren Buffett – known as the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ – dropped out of the top five. Among the 493 newcomers were reality television star Kim Kardashian and Whitney Wolfe Herd, the chief executive of dating app Bumble.
Miss Kardashian has amassed an estimated fortune of £720million ($1billion) through her firm KKW Beauty and shapewear brand Skims.
The star, who is no stranger to controversy, was heavily criticised last year after she celebrated her 40th on a private island. Critics slammed the getaway as ‘tone deaf’.
Mrs Wolfe Herd, 31, is worth an estimated £940million ($1.3billion) after Bumble went public earlier this year.
Yesterday the High Pay Centre said the Forbes figures showed how wealth was flowing to ‘a tiny number of superrich individuals’.
Luke Hildyard, the thinktank’s director, said: ‘it’s impossible to “earn” a billion dollars. nobody is that much smarter or more productive than anybody else.
‘This kind of wealth is what some commentators have called “systems money” because it’s generated through political and economic power, not hard work.’