Jeff Bezos the owner of Amazon.com has become the richest man in modern history according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The net worth of the Amazon.com Inc. founder rose a little above $150 billion in New York on Monday; about $55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates who has now become the world’s second-richest person after holding the top spot for a long while.
Jeff Bezzos who is just 54 has also surpassed Bill Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. This implies that the $100 billion mark hit by Gates briefly in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom would be worth about $149 billion in today’s dollars.
This means Jeff Bezos has become richer than anyone else on the planet since 1982, the time Forbes published its inaugural wealth ranking.
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Bezos crossed the threshold as Amazon was preparing to kick off its 36-hour summer sales event, Prime Day, which got off to a rocky start as glitches struck the firm’s website and mobile app.
The company’s shares had sky rocketed to a record high of $1,841.95 early on Monday, which extended gains as news of the wealth status of the Amazon.com Chief executive filtered in, eventually closing up at $1,822.49.
Jeff Bezos’s stay above $150 billion may however be short-lived as the stock slipped below $1,800 in extended trading after Netflix Inc. posted disappointing results that rattled tech investors.
The net worth of Jeff Bezos has soared by $52 billion alone this year; more than the entire fortune of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Whose Chairman Jack Ma is also Asia’s wealthiest person.
It also puts Bezos’s personal fortune within spitting distance of the $151.5 billion controlled by the Walton family, the world’s richest dynasty.
Reactions have also trailed the Bloomberg Billionaires Index announcement
Michael Cole, CEO of Cresset Family Office has said…. “It’s hard to even put it in perspective; It’s such a staggering number.”
A Federal Reserve report discovered the top 1 percent of U.S. families controlled 38.6 percent of wealth in the United States as at 2016, compared with 22.8 percent held by the bottom 90 percent. Last year, Oxfam International also discovered that more than 80 percent of earnings went to the top 1 percent of the world’s population.
Bill Gates comes behind Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg index with a $95.3 billion fortune. Gates would have been the richest man with more than $150 billion in net worth if only he’d held onto assets that he’s given away, mainly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bill Gates has donated almost 700 million Microsoft shares and $2.9 billion worth of cash and other assets since 1996. .