- Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have seen a collective $50 billion in net worth growth this year. These are the details.
This year, the world’s richest people gained $1.2 trillion in net worth according to a report by Fortune. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the $1.2 trillion boosted the collective net worth of the world’s 500 wealthiest people to $5.9 trillion.
This year, we saw Kylie Jenner becoming the youngest self-made billion this year as Kylie Cosmetics signed an exclusive deal with Ulta Beauty and the company sold a 51% stake for $600 million. And the leading gainer for 2019 was French businessman Bernard Arnault — who saw a $36.5 billion gain and became the world’s third-richest person (one out of three centibillionaires with a net worth of over $100 billion).
For this year, 52 people on the ranking saw their net worth decline. This includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (down about $9 billion) due to his divorce settlement with MacKenzie Bezos. However, Jeff Bezos is still ranked as the world’s richest person.
Personally, media mogul Rupert Murdoch saw a net worth decrease of about $10 billion after Walt Disney bought the assets of Fox and the proceeds from that sale were distributed to his six children. Murdoch’s children became billionaires in that process.
The 172 American billionaires on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index saw an increase of $500 billion in net worth. Of that amount, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw a net worth increase of $27.3 billion and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates saw a net worth increase of $22.7 billion.
In China, He Xiangjian — the founder of the largest air conditioner exporter — saw a net worth increase of 79% to $23.3 billion.
And some of the new billionaires include White Claw founder Anthony von Mandl ($3.6 billion) and Takeaway.com NV founder Jitse Groen ($1.5 billion).
Featured image credit: Harvard University via YouTube
