Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is poised to be the new
king ― of the billionaires.Bezos is on the cusp of overtaking Bill Gates as the
world’s richest man, buoyed by the strong performance of Amazon stock in recent
months and the (comparatively) smaller gains of Gates’ Microsoft during the
same period.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that Bezos’
net worth passed $86 billion on Monday, putting him “only” around $3.8 billion
short of Gates, who clocks in at $89.8 billion.
Bezos owns about 17 percent of Amazon, which
closed above $1,000
per share on Friday for the first time ever, up from around
$850 per share in mid-March. At those prices, that makes Amazon worth more than two Walmarts.
From the beginning of the year until now, Bezos
has added more than $20 billion to his net worth, according to the Bloomberg
index.
The only other billionaire to approach those
gains is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who added $15.6 billion to his
net worth in the first half of the year. Worth $65.6 billion, he ranks fifth on
Bloomberg’s list.
Ahead of Zuckerberg and not far behind Bezos is
Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, who co-founded Zara ― the world’s largest
fashion retailer ― and is worth approximately $85.9 billion, followed by
business magnate Warren Buffett ($74.6 billion).
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