It was reported on May 30 that in the past five months, the super rich suffered heavy losses as the US stock market plummeted. The net assets of Elon Musk, the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, decreased by a total of $115billion.
According to the Bloomberg billionaire index, Musk's assets have shrunk by $46.4 billion, Bezos has shrunk by $53.2 billion, and Gates' assets have shrunk by $15.1 billion. As of last Friday, Musk's net assets were $224billion, Bezos $139billion and gates $123billion.
Bernardarnault, chairman of LVMH group, a French luxury group, is currently the third richest person in the world. Since January this year, his assets have shrunk by $44.7 billion to $133billion.
Most of Musk's and Bezos' wealth is linked to Tesla's and Amazon's shares, respectively. They are the current and former chief executives of the two companies. However, Gates has a relatively small stake in Microsoft, which he co founded with others.
Musk holds 15.6% of Tesla's shares, worth about $122billion. The company's share price has fallen nearly 37% so far this year.
In April this year, musk acquired 9.2% of the shares of twitter, which made investors question whether he could concentrate on managing Tesla, leading to a sharp drop in Tesla's share price. Musk has sold $8.4 billion worth of Tesla shares to fund its acquisition.
Gates' more diversified portfolio helped him survive the sell-off. The bill and melindagates foundation is a charitable organization jointly established by gates and his ex-wife. It mainly invests in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, whose share price has risen 5% this year.
But Gates' other investments include his investment company cascade investments (investing in Apple And other technology companies). In the face of inflationary pressure and declining consumer confidence, technology stocks have experienced a sharp correction in recent months.
Bezos currently holds about 50million shares of Amazon, worth about $115billion. The stock has fallen by nearly a third this year, but its market value is still nearly $1.2 trillion. Tesla's share price, after falling nearly 37%, now has a market value of about $786billion. (small)