Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is officially the richest person in the world… again.
Yeah, the guy is so loaded, so pro, that he decides to become the wealthiest person on the planet not once but twice.
According to Forbes, Amazon stock opened up more than 8% higher than Thursday’s close on Friday morning adding a cool $7 billion to Bezos’ bank account.
That’s some day at the office.
But it wasn’t enough. Microsoft’s stock had spiked 7% overnight too, leaving Jeff Bezos only slightly behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
On Friday morning, Gates’ net worth of $90.1 billion still trumped Bezos’ respectable $89.7 billion.
Then at 10:15am, Amazon stock climbed 2%, adding $900 million to his net worth and thus ahead of Gates globally with a staggering $90.6 billion.
Bezos became the richest person in the world three months ago when Amazon stock went bananas on July 27. But it only lasted a few hours. Amazon’s stock dropped after reporting a big miss on earnings in its second quarter.
Although many think of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and all-round good egg, as the richest man in the world, there are many nipping at his feet at the top of Bloomberg’s capitalist ladder.
Gates was last surpassed on Forbes’ real-time rankings for just two days almost a year ago by Spanish retail giant Amancio Ortega, majority shareholder of the Inditex group known for high store brands Zara, Pull and Bear, and Bershka.
Forbes started keeping track of billionaires around the world back in 1987 – and Bezos is only the seventh person to hold the title of the world’s richest person and the third American to top the global ranks.
Bezos first appeared on the Forbes 400 in 1998, the year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune.
But the Amazon CEO would be ‘nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person’ had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy, writes Forbes.
Gates created the Giving Pledge to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, he had given away $32.9 billion up until the end of 2016.
