Amazon Founder Gains as Other Tech Goliaths’ Fortunes Slump
On 21 March, the troika of tech goliaths – Facebook, Alphabet and Oracle – lost a combined wealth of $6.7 billion.
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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, added $3.3 billion to his net worth on a tearful Tuesday even as the fortunes of tech titans tumbled by a huge margin, Bloomberg reported on 21 March.
According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Amazon founder added $32.8 billion to his net worth since the start of 2018. The hike in his personal wealth is touted to be more than the individual market capitalisations of 63 percent of companies in the S&P 500 Index, the report added.
Bezos also topped this year's Forbes World's Billionaires list with a record fortune of $122 billion, IANS reported. Bezos' fortune increased by $39.2 billion in 2017 – the largest up move in anyone's net worth recorded by Forbes since 2017. He dethroned philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the IANS report added.
According to Blomberg, Larry Elisson, founder of software firm Oracle, lead the pack with a personal drop of $4.5 billion in his wealth, clocking around 9.4 percent as a result of poor quarterly revenue. Alphabet’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin lost about $200 million on Tuesday.
Facebook is facing a major backlash after reports emerged that the political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, accessed the data of its 50 million users without their permission. The firm is now facing a government search of its London office, questions from US state authorities, and a demand by Facebook that it submit to a forensic audit.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
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