Bezos beats Buffett to become world’s third-richest
WASHINGTON: Jeff Bezos just snuck past Warren Buffett to become the third-richest person on Earth.
The Amazon.com Inc founder’s net worth was US$65.05 billion (RM260 billion) on Thursday, topping Buffett by US$32 million on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
With the gain,
Bezos’s wealth rose
US$5.4 billion this year, marking a resurgence after it fell to as low as
US$43 billion in
February amid turbulent global markets.
Most of his wealth is tied to Amazon, which has benefited from robust demand for quick-turnaround delivery, cloud services and gadgets like the Kindle and Echo.
In April, the company posted biggest-ever net income and firstquarter sales jumped 28 per cent, including a 64 per cent rise in cloudcomputing division. The shares are up 54 per cent since hitting a low of US$482.07 on February 9.
Bezos’s rise in the billionaire ranking has been helped by Buffett’s philanthropy. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman donated US$2.2 billion worth of stock this month to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bezos now lags Spain’s Amancio Ortega, the Inditex SA founder who has a US$73 billion fortune and Microsoft Inc’s Bill Gates, the world’s richest person, with US$89 billion. Bloomberg