Top richest Men in the World

1. Bernard Arnault & family LVMH

2 Elon Musk Tesla, SpaceX

3 Jeff Bezos Amazon $117B

4 Larry Ellison Oracle

5 Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway

6 Bill Gates Microsoft

7 Carlos Slim Helu & family

8 Mukesh Ambani Diversified

9 Steve Ballmer

10 Françoise Bettencourt Meyers & family L'Oréal $79B 5%

Elon Musk, the second-wealthiest person in the world has a net worth of $191 billion. In October, Musk took over Twitter in a $44 billion dollar deal, which has drawn criticism from investors. Many say it’s a distraction from Musk’s work with Tesla.

While Tesla shares have rebounded—after falling roughly 70% in 2022—Musk’s wealth still sits about 13% lower than in March of last year.

Third on the list is Jeff Bezos, followed by Larry Ellison. The latter of the two, who founded Oracle, owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai which he bought in 2012 for $300 million.

Fifth on the list is Warren Buffet. In his annual letter to shareholders, he discussed how Berkshire Hathaway reported record operating profits despite economic headwinds. The company outperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 22% in 2022.

How Fortunes Have Changed

Given multiple economic crosscurrents, billionaire wealth has diverged over the last year.

Since March 2022, just four of the top 10 richest in the world have seen their wealth increase. Two of these are European magnates, while Carlos Slim Helu runs the largest telecom firm in Latin America. In fact, a decade ago Slim was the richest person on the planet.

jeff Bezos has seen his wealth decline 32%, or $54 billion, the most across the top 10 richest. Amazon posted a $2.7 billion net loss for the full year of 2022, its worst year yet.

Overall, as the tech sector saw dismal returns over the year, the top 10 tech billionaires lost almost $500 billion in combined wealth.

Recent Shakeups in Asia

Perhaps the most striking news for the world’s richest centers around Gautam Adani, formerly the richest person in Asia.

In January, Hindenburg Research, a short-selling firm, released a report claiming that the Adani Group engaged in stock manipulation and fraud. Specifically, the alleged the firm used offshore accounts to launder money, artificially boost share prices, and hide losses.

The Adani Group, which owns India’s largest ports—along with ports in Australia, Sri Lanka, and Israel—lost $100 billion in value in the span of a few weeks.

Interestingly, very few Indian mutual funds hold significant shares in Adani Group, signaling a lack of confidence across India’s market, which was also cited in Hindenburg’s report.

The founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos overtook Bill Gates as the world’s richest person in 2017 and remained so until 2021 before Elon Musk outranked him. Earning his massive fortune through Amazon, Bezos stepped down as CEO in July 2021 but continues to be the company’s chairman. His hugely successful venture initially started off as a marketplace for books when the internet was still not ubiquitous. When more people became accustomed to online buying, the business took off to encompass more goods other than books. Amazon eventually expanded its services to include cloud storage and entertainment — Amazon Prime Video.

In 2019, Bezos and his wife Mackenzie Scott divorced. As part of the settlement, his ex-wife took home 4 per cent of Amazon’s shares while Bezos kept 12 per cent. In the following months, Bezos further sold his company shares and is estimated to have only 10 per cent stakes. The amount he earned from selling his shares was reportedly used to fund his private rocket company Blue Origin, which brought him to space in 2021.

As a result, Mukesh Ambani has climbed to Asia’s top spot, controlling a $84 billion empire that spans from oil and gas and renewable energy to telecom. His conglomerate, Reliance Industries is the largest company by market cap in India.

As of April 9, 2023

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world’s richest people. Details about the calculations are provided in the net worth analysis on each billionaire’s profile page. The figures are updated at the close of every trading day in New York.