Amazon CEO Bezos tops $150 billion in net worth

NEW YORK Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history.

The Amazon.com founder’s net worth broke US$150 billion in New York on Monday morning, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s about US$55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person.

Bezos, 54, has now topped Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. The US$100 billion mark that Gates hit briefly in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom would be worth about US$149 billion in today’s dollars. That makes the Amazon chief executive officer richer than anyone else on earth since at least 1982, when Forbes published its inaugural wealth ranking.

Bezos crossed the threshold just as Amazon prepares to kick off its 36-hour summer sales event, Prime Day. The company’s share price was US$1,822.49 at close in New York, extending its 2018 gain to 56 per cent and giving Bezos a US$150.8 billion fortune.

His net worth has soared by US$52 billion this year, which is more than the entire fortune of Mukesh Ambani, the newly crowned richest person in Asia. It also puts Bezos’s personal fortune within spitting distance of the Walton family’s US$151.5 billion, which is the world’s richest dynasty.

“It’s hard to even put it in perspective,” said Michael Cole, CEO of Cresset Family Office. “It’s such a staggering number.”

A Federal Reserve report found the top one per cent of U.S. families controlled 38.6 per cent of wealth in the U.S. in 2016, compared with 22.8 per cent held by the bottom 90 per cent.