Bill Gates Once Again Reclaimed As World’s Richest Person

Bill Gates had briefly topped Bezos on an intraday basis last month after Amazon posted its first profit drop in two years. While Microsoft has surged 48% this year, boosting the value of Gates’s 1% stake. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates overtook Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person on Friday, reclaiming the top ranking for the first time in more than two years.

Gates, 64, had briefly topped Bezos, 55, on an intraday basis last month after Amazon posted its first profit drop in two years, but shares of the world’s biggest online retailer pared the decline. The index, which tracks the wealth of the richest 500 people, is updated each trading day after US markets close. Europe’s richest person, Bernard Arnault, is third with $102.7 billion.

Amazon’s Cloud arm AWS losing $10 billion Pentagon project to Microsoft has also helped the Satya Nadella-led company gain on the stock market. Following the announcement, Microsoft shares jumped 4 percent, increasing Gates’ fortune by $110 billion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, amid Amazon lackluster Q3 result.

Bezos had ended Gates’ 24-year run as the richest man in 2018 with a net worth of $160 billion. In October, the roles had reversed on an intraday basis after Amazon lost its first profit shares in two years. Gates had debuted on Forbes’ first-ever billionaire list in 1987 with a net worth of $1.25 billion.At the same time, Bezos had joined the ‘Forbes 400 list of richest Americans’ in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion.

Bezos was subjected to further loss after he and his wife finalised their divorce in April in what was reported as the biggest divorce settlement in history. The Bezos divorce entitled MacKenzie Bezos to Jeff Bezos’ stocks worth around $36 billion.