New York: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tops this year’s Forbes World’s Billionaires list with a record fortune of $122 billion. Bezos’ fortune increased by $39.2 billion in 2017 – the largest up move in anyone’s net worth recorded by Forbes last year – dethroning philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is calculated at $90 billion, Efe reported.
While Gates has headed the world’s richest list 18 times over the last 24 years, the gap between his fortune and that of Bezos is the largest between two first-place moguls since 2001, according to Forbes.
Bezos and Gates are trailed by American investor Warren Buffet – with an estimated fortune of $84 billion – followed by Frenchman Bernard Arnault, the head of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, with a net worth of $72 billion, climbing seven positions and Europe’s richest person.
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg rounds out the top-5 list, with a net worth of $71 billion. Spaniard Amancio Ortega, the founder of clothes retailer Zara, dropped to 6th place after losing $1.3 billion, his fortune now calculated at $70 billion.
The magazine also reported that US President Donald Trump’s net worth is $3.1 billion, the $400 million loss he suffered over the past year resulting in a plunge of more than 200 places in the ranking from 544th to 766th. In 2017, Trump’s net worth was calculated by Forbes to be $3.5 billion, some $1 billion less than it had been on the 2016 Billionaires List.
Meanwhile, Mukhes Ambani is richer by $16.9 billion in 2018 with assets of $40.1 billion. He has moved to 19th rank on the list. In 2017, he ranked 33rd with $23.2 billion. But the Reliance Industries Chairman is richest Indian billion, followed by Azim Premji, Lakshmi Mittal, Shiv Nadar, and Dilip Shanghvi.
The Forbes World’s Billionaires list includes 2,208 people from all over the world whose fortunes are calculated to be at least $1 billion. This year’s list included 259 new billionaires, while the names of 121 people who had made the list on previous occasions were dropped due to losses.
