It has been almost two years for Bill Gates, the Co-founder of Microsoft, he gracefully rode the horse of riches standing as the unbeatable person in the matter of riches. One must not forget his generosity in charity and other purposes too.
Everything was simple unless a major change took place in Thursday’s stock market. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, all of sudden bagged a staggering amount according to the stocks and mounted himself atop the list of World’s richest people. He overtook Bill Gates’ net worth of $ 90.1 Billion with his $ 90.6 Billion. Jeff holds 17 per cent of total Amazon shares.
Surprising everyone, Jeff is the only person to surpass Gates in past two years and with this unusual achievement, he became the 7th person to become World’s richest person and third American to achieve this feat, Gates and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett were the others. Gates has held the title for 18 of the past 23 years.
Forbes has been tracking the global wealth details from the past 30 years, only five people have ranked on our annual compendium of wealth as the richest person on the planet. In between those annual lists, at least two people have briefly become the world’s richest, the most recent of whom was Jeff Bezos, who overtook Bill Gates as No. 1 on July 27 as Amazon stock surged.
Despite earning $1.5 billion in overnight becoming the richest person, his stocks soon fell nearly 1 per cent for the day to $1,046 which resulted in Bill Gates reclaiming the lead position by afternoon. Lists from the Forbes and Bloomberg claim that Jeff is now at the second position.
Imagine losing $2.6 billion, like Jeff Bezos did in the last 90 minutes.
(h/t @SPGMarketIntel) $AMZN pic.twitter.com/oDOwVGet9l
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) July 27, 2017
Describing the same, Forbes said, “Amazon stock opened up 1.6% on Thursday, adding $1.4 billion to Bezos’ net worth. That was enough to put him ahead of Gates, who was last surpassed on Forbes’ real-time rankings for just two days nearly a year ago by Spanish retail giant Amancio Ortega.”
Following the instant decline of 77 percent in Jeff’s fortune, Amazon’s shares fell by 2 per cent. Amazon said it earned $197 million in the second quarter, down from $857 million which it earned a year ago.
On the whole, Forbes in its verdict said the way both Jeff and Gates spend their fortunes is different. “Bezos would be nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy. Gates, who created the Giving Pledge with Buffett to encourage billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, had given away $31.1 billion over the course of his lifetime through the end of 2016. Forbes estimates that Bezos, who has not signed the pledge, had given approximately $100 million to charity through the end of 2015.”