BEZOS BOOSTS FORTUNE AS AMAZON HITS RECORD HIGH

£126bn What Jeff Bezos is worth

£50bn Increase in his fortune this year

£260m

Rise in value of his Amazon shares yesterday

£726bn Value of Amazon

£18m Amazon sales every hour

£21m UK tax paid by Amazon last year AMAZON shares have broken through $2,000 for the first time, closing the gap between the internet retailer and trillion-dollar tech rival Apple.

It added £260m to the fortune of boss Jeff Bezos( pictured with his wife MacKenzie) in a single day.

Last night Amazon was worth £726bn, following a near-70pc surge in its shares this year.

Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley bank, said: ‘We have increasing confidence that Amazon’s rapidly growing, increasingly large, high- margin revenue streams will drive higher profitability and continued upward estimate revisions.’

Former Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said Amazon will overtake Apple to become the world’s largest public company because it has ‘reinvented shopping’.

Bezos, 54, owns 16pc of Amazon. He overtook Microsoft’s Bill Gates last year as the world’s wealthiest man, and become the richest person in modern history in July as his fortune hit £115bn. Yesterday he was worth £126bn.