Jeff Bezos, the founder of e-commerce pioneer Amazon, is the richest person on earth with a fortune that grew to about $112 billion as his company’s stock surged 59 percent from a year earlier. That made the 54-year-old the first centi-billionaire for having a 12-digit net worth, according to an annual ranking by Forbes magazine.
Bill Gates, 62, the cofounder of Microsoft, ceded the top spot for the sixth time since 1995 with a personal fortune of $90 billion. Warren Buffett, 87, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, came in third at $84 billion.
The year was generally good for billionaires with rising stock markets worldwide. A record 2,208 billionaires made Forbes’ yearly ranking of the world’s billionaires. Altogether they are worth a record $9.1 trillion, up 18 percent from a year earlier.
Bezos’s wealth grew by $39.2 billion last year, putting him ahead of the $30.5 billion gain by France’s Bernard Arnault, 69, the head of luxury goods giant LVMH. He is the richest European for the first time since 2012 and No. 4 richest in the world. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 33, rounded out the top 5 with personal wealth of $71 billion.
Charles and David Koch made the top 10 with $60 billion each. The offspring of Walmart founder Sam Walton – Jim Walton, Rob Walton and Alice Walton – each had about $46 billion, placing them in the top 20.
But not every billionaire saw gains, including President Donald Trump, whose wealth slipped by $400 million to $3.1 billion, while his ranking dropped to 766 from 544.
Two tech entrepreneurs from mainland China made it into the top 20 for the first time. Ma Huateng, the chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings, is Asia’s wealthiest person with riches of $45.3 billion. The company’s WeChat social-messaging app has about 1 billion active users. Jack Ma, CEO of e-commerce giant Alibaba, boasted wealth of $39 billion with the 76 percent gain in the company’s stock.
China had the most new billionaires with 89, while the U.S. added 18. The U.S. has more billionaires than any country in the world with 585, while greater China — including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan — has 476.