The world’s richest got poorer this year, but Amazon’s Jeff Bezos did not
The chief of the e-commerce major more than doubled his fortune in 2015, even as falling commodity prices and a slowdown in China hit most other bigwigs.
The 400 richest people in the world lost a total of $19 billion (Rs 1.2 lakh crore) in 2015, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which was set up in 2012 to measure the daily wealth of top earners around the globe. The stock markets wobbled in 2015 on the back of falling commodity prices and a slowdown in China, experts said, resulting in the first annual decline of the index since it was instituted. Mexican telecom baron Carlos Sim was the biggest loser, as the value of his firm America Movil fell by 25% in 2015. Slim was the world’s richest person in 2013, but fell to No. 5 this year.
United States investor Warren Buffet and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also lost out, and were overtaken in the list of rich people by Spanish fashion honcho Amancio Ortega, who owns clothing label Zara. However, the top gainer this year was Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, who more than doubled his fortune to $59 billion (Rs 3,914 lakh crore), putting him at No.4 on the index. Investors backed Bezos, whose e-commerce firm raked in tremendous profits in 2015.