World’s super-rich hit by a new way to lose their wealth
● For the world’s richest people, there used to be three ways to quickly see a fortune disappear: death, default or divorce.
The past few months have added another risk: sky-high valuations of giant technology companies falling from the stratosphere.
Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth plummeted as much as $31bn (about R476bn) on Thursday, the third-biggest one-day drop in wealth since the Bloomberg billionaires index began compiling data in 2012.
Two of his co-founders, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz, saw their fortunes tumble by $4.6bn and $3.1bn respectively, as Meta Platforms shares plunged 26%.
Over at Spotify, CEO Daniel Ek’s net worth has fallen by $1.1bn so far in 2022 to $2.7bn.
An 11-digit move in wealth had previously been reserved for monumental events in the lives of billionaires. Some recent highprofile examples include Jeff Bezos’s divorce in 2019 and Bill Hwang losing $20bn in a matter of days when his Archegos Capital Management imploded last year under the weight of margin calls.
Now it’s becoming almost routine, especially with the volatile swings in Elon Musk’s fortune.
The world’s richest person lost $35bn in a day in November as Tesla shares fell after a Twitter poll in which Musk asked voters if he should sell 10% of his stake in the company. His net worth also plunged by $25.8bn last week, adding to a long list of daily declines that dominate the list of the top 10 biggest drops ever recorded by Bloomberg’s index.
Of course, Musk and other tech titans can add to their fortunes in a blink of an eye too.
Shares of Amazon.com surged about 18% in extended trading on Thursday after profit beat estimates and it raised the price of its prime subscription service.
That’s a boon for Bezos, who slipped one spot to be the world’s third-richest person on Thursday, the first time he’s fallen out of the top 2 since September 2017.
An 18% increase would boost his net worth by $25bn, which would be the sixthbiggest gain on record in a decade of Bloomberg data.
“This kind of volatility is to be expected when you’re at these valuations,” said Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, head of Goldman Sachs Group’s investment-strategy group.
Even if broader declines in tech shares are contained, Zuckerberg’s losses are especially striking because he’s been a mainstay among the world’s 10 richest people since mid-2015.
He nearly fell out of the top 10 after Thursday’s rout, ranking just ahead of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, in the Bloomberg wealth index.
It is another indication of the unpredictable ways in which the US rebound from the Covid pandemic will ripple across markets, companies and the economy.