The world’s 500 super-rich saw their wealth shrink by a total of $1.4 trillion in the first half of the year, the largest drop in history

Elon Musk’s fortune shrank by nearly $62 billion, Jeff Bezos by about $63 billion and Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth by more than half. the top 500 wealthiest people in the world by wealth in the first half of 2022 lost a total of $1.4 trillion, an appalling drop, with the billionaire class seeing its wealth shrink by the largest amount ever in six months.

This is in stark contrast to the previous two years, when the wealth of the ultra-wealthy ballooned as governments and central banks took unprecedented stimulus measures in the wake of the new crown epidemic, sending assets of all kinds, including tech stocks and cryptocurrencies, soaring.

Policymakers are now raising interest rates to combat high inflation, and stocks that once rose like wildfire – and the assets of the billionaires who hold them – are shrinking fast. In the second quarter of this year, Tesla experienced its worst quarterly performance ever, and Amazon posted its biggest drop since the dot-com bubble burst.

 

While the wealth of the world’s top billionaires is shrinking rapidly, it has failed to significantly narrow the gap between rich and poor. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Tesla co-founder Musk remains the world’s richest man, with a fortune of $208.5 billion. Amazon’s Bezos is next, with a net wealth of $129.6 billion.

Bernard Arnault, the richest man in France, is third with $128.7 billion, followed by Bill Gates with $114.8 billion. Only four people in the world have a fortune of more than $100 billion, compared to 10 at the beginning of the year, including Zuckerberg. He currently sits in 17th place with $60 billion in assets.