The wealth of the richest 500 people on Earth has shrunk at the fastest rate ever in the first six months of 2022. Financial news agency Bloomberg calculated that they saw 1,400 billion dollars (1,346 billion euros) of their wealth evaporate in the past six months.
The wealth of the world’s richest person Elon Musk fell by almost 59.5 billion euros. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX still has 200 billion euros left. The number two on the rich list, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, lost almost 60 billion euros and now has a net worth of 124 billion euros. Bernard Arnault, the Frenchman behind luxury brand company LVMH, is third: he sees 47.2 billion euros evaporate and 123.4 billion euros remains.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates is the fourth and last super-wealthy to have more than $100 billion. He loses 22.4 billion euros and has 110.1 billion left. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook mother Meta, lost more than half of his assets and still has 57.5 billion euros left. With that, he only finishes in seventeenth place.
Malaise in stock markets
The decline has everything to do with the slump in the stock markets, where interest rate hikes and fears of a recession have caused price losses. In previous years, corona support from governments and low interest rates meant that a lot of money was invested in shares, houses and crypto coins.
However, it is now tech companies such as Tesla, Meta and Amazon that are losing significant value on the stock exchanges because they are relatively expensive. Much of the wealth of Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg is also in the interests they have in their companies.
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