Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos lost the title of the world’s richest man after Amazon Inc. reported that revenue and profit for the quarter could be below expectations of fierce competition and rising costs from its plan to accelerate delivery times worldwide. Following the announcement, online retail behemoth’s shares dropped 7 percent during Thursday’s initial trading hours, taking Bezos ‘ fortune down to $103.9 billion.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is back on number one spot with a net worth of $105.7 billion, The Forbes announced, adding that Bezos had ended the 24-year reign of Gates as the richest man in 2018 when its net worth rose to $160 billion. As per the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Bernard Arnault, LVMH Chairman Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, aka LVMH, moved Gates to the Number 3 spot earlier in July.
Apart from the not – so-encouraging quarterly earnings outlook, the sale of his 4 percent interest to former wife Mackenzie Bezos is another factor that led to a fall in Bezos ‘ net worth. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Mackenzie ranks 22nd with a net worth of $40.3 billion. In July, a Seattle-area judge finalized Bezos ‘ divorce from his 25-year-old wife, paving the way for her to receive $38.3 billion in Amazon stock.
Amazon said on Thursday that revenue growth also slowed in the third quarter for the lucrative cloud computing business of the company, missing estimates of analysts.
However, the company beat expectations on total revenue in the third quarter, posting sales up 24 percent to $70 billion. Amazon also said it expected operating income for the holiday quarter to range from $1.2 billion to $2.9 billion, while analysts expected $4.19 billion, according to research firm FactSet.
Recently in August, it was predicted that Jeff Bezos might lose his title of World’s Richest Man. The billionaire founder of Microsoft Inc., Bill Gates has earlier retained the world’s richest person title for around 20 years and maybe again on the verge of reclaiming it. Last year, the rising share prices of Amazon propelled Jeff Bezos to the top of the ‘World’s rich’ list. Earlier also Jeff Bezos piped Bill Gates in 2017 for a short time and then he surpassed Gates finally in 2018 to become the world’s richest person. Net Worth of all the billionaires is largely calculated from their equity interests, either in the pool of other enterprises or in their own company or a mixture of both.
The net worth constitutes of various assets and reserves held by a person. With equity being a huge part, the net worth keeps fluctuating with the changes in the market prices of the assets held.
