The world knows 3 main ways in which the wealth of the world’s richest people can disappear quickly: death, bankruptcy or divorce.
The past few months have added a new reason that may storm fortunes in moments, which is the high valuations of technology companies, whose pioneers control most of the first positions in the lists of the wealthy.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune plunged by as much as $31 billion Thursday, the third largest drop in wealth in a single day since the Bloomberg Billionaires Index began compiling data in 2012.
The fortunes of two other founders, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz, also fell by $4.6 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively, following the shares of Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, fell by 26 percent.
Meanwhile, Spotify CEO Daniel Eck lost nearly a third of his fortune during 2022, following losing $1.1 billion to settle at $2.7 billion.
According to data collected by Bloomberg and seen by Al Arabiya.net, the prominent events on the collapse of wealth were more related to divorce cases. The co-founder of Amazon lost more than $36 billion following his divorce from McKenzie Scott, which took a huge share of his fortune, during 2019, while the founder of the investment company Archegos Capital, Bill Huang, suffered a loss of $20 billion within days, following A losing bet on stocks cost him his entire fortune.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s fortune was also among the most volatile, as he lost $35 billion in one day last November, following polling his followers to sell a 10% stake in Tesla. And this was not the only loss, as his fortune fell by 25.8 billion dollars last week, adding to the long list of daily declines that dominate the list of the 10 largest declines recorded by the Bloomberg Index ever.
Of course, Musk and other tech giants can add to their fortunes in the blink of an eye, too.
And recently, following the big jump in Amazon shares by regarding 13% last Friday, following raising the prices of its subscriptions to the Prime service, Bezos regained his ranking as the second richest person in the world, following falling to third place for the first time since September 2017.
“That kind of volatility is to be expected when you’re in these valuations,” said Charmaine Moussafer Rahmani, head of investment strategies at Goldman Sachs.
Even if the broader declines in tech stocks are contained, Zuckerberg’s losses are particularly striking because he has been a mainstay among the world’s 10 richest people since mid-2015. He nearly slipped out of the top ten following Thursday’s losses, just ahead of Mukesh Ambani, the richest A man in Asia, in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The recent volatility is another indication of the unexpected ways in which the US recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is spreading across markets, businesses, and the economy.
