Wealth
World’s Richest Gain $1.2 Trillion in 2019 as Jeff Bezos Retains Crown
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Updated on
- The wealth of the 500 richest people surged 25% in 2019
- Wrecked cars, catchy tunes are among the sources of new riches
Jeff Bezos Is World's Richest Person Again
The leveraging of a giant social-media presence, a catchy tune about a family of sharks and a burgeoning collection of junkyards are just a few of the curious ways that helped make 2019 a fertile year for fortunes to blossom around the world.
Kylie Jenner became the youngest self-made billionaire this year after her company, Kylie Cosmetics, signed an exclusive partnership with Ulta Beauty Inc. She then sold a 51% stake for $600 million.
It has been almost two months since the Washington Nationals captured their first World Series championship, but people around the world are still singing along to the baseball team’s adopted rallying cry: “Baby Shark, doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo.” The Korean family that helped popularize the viral earworm are now worth about $125 million.
Even car wrecks proved to be a treasure trove. Willis Johnson, the gold-chain-wearing Oklahoma native who founded Copart Inc., has amassed a $1.9 billion fortune by building a network of junkyards to sell damaged autos.
The emergence of atypical fortunes underscores just how much money the uber-rich accumulated in 2019.
And the richer they were at the start of the year, the richer they got. The world’s 500 wealthiest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Indexadded $1.2 trillion, boosting their collective net worth 25% to $5.9 trillion.
Such gains are sure to add fuel to the already heated debate about widening wealth and income inequality. In the U.S., the richest 0.1% control a bigger share of the pie than at any time since 1929, prompting some politicians to call for a radical restructuring of the economy.
“The hoarding of wealth by the few is coming at the cost of peoples’ lives,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist, said in a Dec. 12 tweet as the U.K. began to vote.
Still, the defeat of Britain’s socialist opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose campaign included attacks on billionaires and calls to “rewrite the rules of our economy,” gave an added boost to mega-fortunes.
Leading the 2019 gains was France’s Bernard Arnault, who added $36.5 billion as he rose on the Bloomberg index to become the world’s third-richest person and one of three centibillionaires -- those with a net worth of at least $100 billion.
In all, just 52 people on the ranking saw their fortunes decline on the year.
Amazon.com Inc.‘s Jeff Bezos was down almost $9 billion, but that drop is because of his divorce settlement with MacKenzie Bezos. The e-commerce titan is still ending the year as the world’s richest person after Amazon shares jumped on Thursday. The company reported a ‘record breaking’ holiday season with billions of items shipped and “tens of millions” of Amazon devices like the Echo Dot sold.
Here’s what the year looked like for the 0.001%:
2019 Winners
2019 Declines
New Billionaires
Despite the widespread gains, plenty of the world’s richest people may be happy to wave farewell to 2019. The year included messy details of the Bezos divorce and the Jeffrey Epsteinsaga, which enveloped a who’s who of financiers and entrepreneurs, after the convicted pedophile arrested in July by federal agents after stepping off his private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
Through it all, their bank balances remained robust, as a record bull market got a December kick with an easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and China, a resolution to Britain’s political stalemate and a blowout U.S. jobs report.
— With assistance by Alexander Sazonov
(Updates with Amazon share surge in 12th paragraph)
Wealth
World’s Richest Lose $444 BillionAfter Hellish Week for Markets
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Virus Effect is Not Making Things Cheaper: Neuberger Berman's Tutrone
Last week was an expensive one for most investors, even for billionaires.
The combined fortunes of the world’s 500 richest people fell by $444 billionas the coronavirus continued to spread -- and spread fear -- rattling equity markets worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 12%, the biggest five-day slide since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, in a rout that vaporized more than $6 trillion from global stocks.
The drubbing more than erased the $78 billion in gains that the 500 wealthiest people had amassed since the start of the year through last week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The world’s three richest people -- Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gatesand LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault-- incurred the biggest losses, with their combined wealth dropping about $30 billion.
Elon Musk, the world’s 25th-richest person, rang up the fourth-largest weekly loss -- $9 billion -- as shares of his Tesla Inc. slid after a steep climb to start the year. He’s still up $8.8 billionin 2020 and has a net worth of $36.3 billion.
Bye-Bye Billions
Among the world's wealthiest people, these 10 incurred the biggest losses in this week's global stock market rout.
Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index
Health officials are struggling to contain the virus, which can cause a potentially deadly pneumonia-like illness in a minority of patients and spread from others who look healthy. The World Health Organization has thus far refrained from declaring it a pandemic.
About 80% of billionaires on Bloomberg’s wealth ranking are now in the red this year, including those whose businesses have been swept up in the global drama. Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison lost $1 billionthis week as the world’s largest cruise-line operator held tourists aboard one of its ships in Japan, where at least five passengers have died.
— With assistance by Benjamin Stupples
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