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World Richest: Jeff Bezos Retains Top Spot Despite Pitfalls

World Richest: Jeff Bezos Retains Top Spot Despite Pitfalls

Jeff Bezos closed the year 2019 retaining the top spot in the list of richest people in the world. He narrowly took the first position beating his Microsoft rival, Bill Gates, by about $2 billion. The feat is remarkable because of the events of loss incurred by Bezos in the past year.

The Amazon founder’s net worth was down $10.1 billion since the beginning of the year. The major contributing factor being his divorce from his wife of 25 years that gulped a chunk of wealth off his assets and saw a massive decline in his net worth.

In mid-2019, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos finalized their divorce with a notable settlement of $38 billion. The announcement of the divorce agreement details back in April disclosed that MacKenzie would grant Jeff all of interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and voting control over her stake in the company. While The Amazon CEO would keep 75% of the Amazon stock their co-owned, and MacKenzie would keep the rest of the stock.

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The rest of the Amazon stock valued at 4% was worth $38 billion, just enough to shoot Ms. MacKenzie up to the list of the richest women in the world, she was the fifth in the Bloomberg index, sitting a little behind Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and Alice Walton.

But MacKenzie’s fortune brought misfortune to Jeff at the tune of $45 billion, reducing his net worth to $121 billion from its $165 billion peak.

The decline in Bezos’ fortune was second to the highest in 2019, just a little behind Rupert Murdoch’s heart-wrenching loss. The media mogul whose net worth fell from $18 billion to $7.8 billion bore the greatest loss of the past year.

Despite losing a huge sum in the biggest private financial event of the decade, Jeff Bezos ended the 2019 as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $115 billion.

The only other billionaire who incurred huge losses in the past year according to Bloomberg was Chinese Hui Kai Yan, who also experienced a decline in his net worth. Many others had a good year with notable increases in their net worth.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg saw an increase of $26 billion; Microsoft’s Bill Gates upped his figures by $22.7 billion. Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin enjoyed fortune soar of $13.3 billion and $12.8 billion respectively.

From Asia, the wave of fortune placed China on the table as the figures soared to its highest rank in time. The nation’s contingent rose to 54, following the U.S closely. He Xiangjian led the surge that increased his fortune by 79%, adding a whopping $23.3 billion to his net worth.

Russia’s richest also added $51 billion, as emerging market assets from currencies to stocks and bonds rebounded in 2019, with a collective increase of 21%.

In Africa, there is a significant rise from the previous year. The African richest man Aliko Dangote witnessed a substantial growth that resulted in addition of $4.3 billion to his net worth.

So collectively, 2019 was a good year for billionaires around the world, though there were cases of loss, but there were not bold enough to trump the significant growth that the year witnessed, surpassing largely the numbers from the previous year.

Here is the list of top 50 richest people in the world according to Bloomberg Index.

Rank Name Total net worth

1 Jeff Bezos $115 billion

2 Bill Gates $113 billion

3 Bernard Arnault $105 billion

4 Warren Buffett $89.3 billion

5 Mark Zukerberg $78.4 billion

6 Amancio Ortega $75.5 billion

7 Larry Page $64.6 billion

8 Sergey Brin $62.7 billion

9 Charles Koch $62.0 billion

10 Julia Flesher Koch $62.0 billion

11 Carlos Slim $60.2 billion

12 Francoise Bettencourt

Meyers $59.0 billion

13 Larry Ellison $58.8 billion

14 Mukesh Ambani $58.6 billion

15 Steve Ballmer $58.1 billion

16 Rob Walton $54.2 billion

17 Jim Walton $54.1 billion

18 Alice Walton $53.0 billion

19 Jack Ma $46.6 billion

20 Jacqueline Mars $42.5 billion

21 John Mars $42.5 billion

22 Francois Pinault $41.8 billion

23 Pony Ma $38.6 billion

24 Sheldon Adelson $38.6 billion

25 MacKenzie Bezos $37.1 billion

26 Phil Knight $36.6 billion

27 Giovanni Ferrero $32.0 billion

28 Michael Dell $30.9 billion

29 Tadashi Yanai $30.7 billion

30 Alain Wertheimer $30.1 billion

31 Gerard Wertheimer $30.1 billion

32 Hui Ka Yan $30.1 billion

33 Li Ka-Shing $29.7 billion

34 Vladimir Potanin $28.0 billion

35 Elon R Musk $27.6 billion

36 Yang Huiyan $26.9 billion

37 Laurene Powell Jobs $26.5 billion

38 Len Blavatnik $25.9 billion

39 Leonardo del Vecchio $25.4 billion

40 Dieter Schwarz $24.8 billion

41 Leonid Mikhelson $24.5 billion

42 Lee Shau Kee $24.1 billion

43 He Xiangjian $23.6 billion

44 Jorge Paulo Lemann $23.6 billion

45 Leonard Lauder $22.6 billion

46 Vagit Alekperov $22.3 billion

47 Pallonji Mistry $21.5 billion

48 Vladimir Lisin $21.4 billion

49 Elaine Marshall $21.4 billion

50 Jim Simons $20.9 billion.

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