Elon Musk, 49, is now one of four centibillionaires in the world.
Three of the richest people in the world have reached surprisingly new levels of personal wealth.
The net worth of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos lost $ 200 billion on Wednesday as shares of the e-commerce giant climbed to a record high. The move prompted his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (50) to simultaneously become on the verge of becoming the richest woman in the world, just behind L’Oreal SA heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, extended an extraordinary chunk of wealth to become a centibillionaire. Tesla Inc. shares rallied Wednesday, hitting its net worth at $ 101 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a list of the 500 richest people in the world.
Tech companies boosted the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes for new quarters for new fourth day, driven by news that the Federal Reserve is likely to keep minimum interest rates close to zero for at least five years.
The gains by Bezos, 56, and Musk represent just the latest hot water market for wealth accumulation in a topsy-turvy year defined by both emerging markets and catastrophic human and economic losses. The world’s 500 richest people have won $ 809 billion so far this year, up 14% since January, even as a global pandemic caused a record drop in gross domestic product and millions of jobs lost.
Income inequality
The growing income inequality has provoked sharp reactions from many progressive politicians and critics on the left. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation earlier this month to tax ‘extreme’ wealth gains during the coronavirus crisis.
“We cannot continue to allow billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to become obscenely wealthy, while millions of Americans are exhausted, hungry and in economic despair,” Sanders said Wednesday in a statement. “It is time to fundamentally change our national priorities.”
Others consider their massive wealth to be fair, saying they have earned it by setting up unique businesses. “If you look at Musk and Bezos, it’s underestimated to say that they’ve changed the world in their own way,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital.
The flow of wealth is specifically concentrated in the top ranks of the billionaires index and is largely driven by technical stocks, which have been on a downward spiral as the pandemic drives more people online. This also includes an increase in the number of retail investors buying shares.
Musk, 49, now one of the four centibillionaires in the world, has seen this fortune grow by $ 73.6 billion this year, a leap even smaller than Bezos, which is up by $ 87.1 billion. The net worth of Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg dropped to $ 100 billion earlier this month. On Wednesday alone, it went up by $ 8.5 billion.
American tech tycoons have not been the only beneficiaries. Indian Mukesh Ambani became the first Asian to be one of the five richest in the world last month. He raised $ 22.5 billion this year on the back of a boost in shares of his conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., whose tech division has attracted recent investments from Facebook and Silver Lake.
And despite growing tensions with the US, China’s tech billionaires have gotten this year as well. Tencent Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Pony Ma raised $ 16.6 billion this year and is now worth $ 55.2 billion. Jack Ma and William Ding of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., of NetEase Inc., also added more than $ 12 billion each, putting their assets at $ 58.9 billion and $ 30.8 billion, respectively.
(Except for the header, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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