Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of online retailer Amazon, has become the wealthiest person of all time as he ended yesterday with a fortune of $197.8 billion (£149.25 billion).
That is a mind-boggling amount of money, and it’s the highest that Forbes has ever recorded during their nearly four decades of tracking the wealth of billionaires.
What a heartwarming story, eh?
The reason for this boost to Bezos’ bank balance is that Amazon’s stock was the best-performing listing on the S&P 500 on Tuesday, seeing a total gain of 4.1 percent.
As a result of that, Bezos saw his wealth rise by $7.2 billion (£5.43 billion) in a single day, because he owns just over 11 percent of the company.
That’s $83,333.3 for every single second of yesterday.
Imagine earning millions whilst brushing your teeth, or doing whatever it is that you do during the day. Ridiculous, right?
Amazon now has a market capitalisation of $1.66 trillion – let’s give up on the conversions to pounds here, and just say that it’s a lot of money.
What this means is that the rise of Amazon’s worth has shoved Bezos into what seems like an insurmountable lead over the world’s second richest man, plucky underdog Bill Gates.
Bezos is now worth $83.8 billion more than the Microsoft owner and philanthropist Gates, but Bill Gates will probably be OK.
Oh, and this is good news for Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie as well.
MacKenzie Scott received a quarter of Bezos’ Amazon stake in part of their huge divorce settlement last year, meaning that she increased her net worth by $2 billion yesterday.
That makes her the third richest woman in the world, with a fortune of $62.7 billion.
Scott has been fairly charitable with her wealth, and claims to have given just less than $1.7 billion to 116 different not-for-profit organisations across the United States of America.
Sitting in a lowly fourth place behind Bezos, Gates, and Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg is Elon Musk, who also had himself a big day earlier this week.
Musk threw another $7.8 billion into the coffers on Monday as shares in his electric car company Tesla rose by 11 percent, closing on a record high.
That meant that he leapfrogged French billionaire Bernard Arnault, previously the richest non-American on the list, into fourth place on the chart.
Yikes, maybe this is why Jeff Bezos looks so pleased with himself all the time.
Source: ladbible
