Elon Musk never so rich: 2021 was a golden year for the CEO of Tesla Motors, almost literally, with a level of wealth previously achieved only by John D. Rockefeller. The visionary entrepreneur topped the rankings with $ 273.5 billion in assets and a 75% profit thanks to investors’ bet on Tesla’s eco-friendly cars.
Bloomberg reports this by tracing the map of the richest on the planet updated to post-2021, or the second year of the pandemic that leaves the world tried but tends to make the rich richer. To the point that the collective fortune of the 500 richest people on the globe has grown by a trillion dollars. Musk, with his has reached the highest level of wealth, net of inflation, in the modern era. This while the 500 of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, have a combined fortune that exceeds 8,400 billion dollars, more than the GDP of all countries except the United States and China.
Growing economic inequality
Ten super-rich have fortunes in excess of $ 100 billion. This shows how the recovery from the economic shock resulting from the Covid emergency has been uneven and has radicalized disparities, with the richest for example benefiting from a relaxed fiscal policy. The pandemic has also pushed up to 150 million people into extreme poverty, according to estimates by the World Bank, a number that is set to rise if inflation continues to rise.
Bezos’ step backwards (Amazon)
Musk ousted Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from the podium, who fell to second place with $ 194.2 billion because the e-commerce and cloud giant rose only 2% compared to 2020. Behind him, Frenchman Bernard Arnault , the patron of the luxury giant LVMH, with a fortune of 177.1 billion dollars: the shares of his empire grew by 55% last year, also thanks to important investments such as the 15 billion dollars spent at the end of 2020 to take over Tiffany.
Bill Gates poorer after divorce
Bill Gates slips into fourth place, with an estimated assets of 138.3 billion dollars: they weighed the divorce from Melinda, which forced him to sell a slice of Microsoft shares to his wife, and a growth of the company of only 5 percent . Sixth Mark Zuckerberg, the patron of Meta-Facebook, with 128.4 billion (and + 24% compared to 2020), preceded by Larry Page, founder of Alphabet-Google, who at the end of the year had a net worth of 129.5 billion dollars, up 57 percent.