Bezos is first to break through US$100b barrier
UNITED STATES: Amazon’s founder is the world’s richest, at
$124 billion (NZ$170b), according to Forbes magazine, but others are not too far behind
Amazon’s ever-growing share price has catapulted its founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos – who owns 16 per cent of the firm’s shares – to the top of the Forbes rich list.
Bezos’ net worth has now surpassed the US$100b mark, making him the only centi-billionaire on the ultra-wealthy list. Forbes reports his real-time net worth to be more than US$124b.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who was the richest person in the world between 1995 and 2017, before Bezos snatched the title, has a net worth of about US$91b, and rising.
With the net worth of some of the world’s wealthiest men close to crossing the US$100b threshold, could we be entering an era of centi-billionaires?
Using Bloomberg data going back to 2016, projections suggest that the top four wealthiest people in the world (after Bezos) will all become centi-billionaires by May
2022, with Gates reaching this milestone in nine months’ time.
While the forecasts are by no means conclusive – particularly as much of the wealth at the top comes from the stock market which constantly fluctuates – they give a rough idea of when the upper echelons of the world’s rich list will enter the centi-billionaire league table.
Alongside Bezos and Gates, veteran investor Warren Buffett, French businessman Bernard Arnault and Inditex founder Amancio Ortega make up the five wealthiest people in the world, with estimated real-time net worths of US$87b, US$75b and
US$73.6b, respectively. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – sitting in sixth place – often dips into the top five rankings when Facebook shares are performing well. Much of the 33-yearold’s net worth is tied up in Facebook shares, meaning it rises and falls with the company’s stock price.
Ortega, fifth on the billionaire rich list, typically earns more than US$400m a year in dividends from his 60 per centc stake in Inditex, the fashion group he founded that owns brands including Zara, Pull & Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti.
While Gates owns just 1.3 per cent of Microsoft stock, having donated a significant chunk to charity, he continues to make money from Cascade Investments, an asset management group that invests his personal wealth.
According to the Financial Times, the investment firm managed by Michael Larson, has grown Gates’ wealth from about
$5b 22 years ago to about $90b, half of which he has donated.
Buffett is chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, which over the past 52 years has recorded an average annual return of 20.8 per cent, while Arnault, chairman of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, holds the bulk of his fortune in Christian Dior stock, through which he holds a controlling interest in LVMH.