Amazon boss goes top of world’s rich list with £74.2bn

After all our festive online shopping

THE founder of Amazon has become the world’s richest man after his wealth grew by £25.5billion this year.

Helped by a bumper Christmas shopping season, Jeff Bezos made £808 every second in 2017, taking his fortune to £74.2 billion and past Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in the rich list.

The 500 wealthiest people on the planet raked in an extra £750 billion this year as the global economy roared into life. Their combined fortunes rose by 23 per cent to more than £4 trillion, according to research by Bloomberg.

Mr Bezos, 53, a married father of four, set up Amazon in his garage in 1994 and built it from an online bookseller into a shopping titan which is devouring high streets.

Amazon pioneered online shopping and its website is one of the biggest players in everything from TV streaming to groceries. It sold £57.5 billion of goods in the first nine months of the year and accounts for nearly one in every two dollars Americans spend online.

Amazon keeps detailed customer figures tightly under wraps, but it said more than 1,400 electronic products were ordered every second by Christmas shoppers using mobile phones.

On its busiest day, a million packages were shipped from Amazon warehouses in North America and Europe. Mr Gates, 62, had held the top spot for four years. He is now worth £68 billion and is the world’s second-richest man. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 33, is fifth with £54.1 billion.

The top 500 includes 14 British billionaires, led by 26-year- old Hugh Grosvenor, who became Duke of Westminster and inherited £9.6 billion when his father died last year. He is 99th on the list.