Jeff Bezos loses $23B as Wall Street meltdown slams world’s richest people
The worlds wealthiest people were a little less rich following Monday’s meltdown on Wall Street.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — who is second only to Elon Musk on Forbes’ list of billionaires — was the biggest loser as his net worth shrank by $23 billion since the rout began Friday.
In all on Monday, the 10 wealthiest people on the Forbes list lost $36 billion.
Bezos’ fortune fell $6.4 billion after suffering a $17 billion decline Friday, — but still leaving him with a net worth valued at $180.7 billion, according to Forbes.
Bezos has been offloading his stash of Amazon shares this year. He sold $8.5 billion worth of Amazon shares throughout February and disclosed a plan in July to sell nearly $5 billion more.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is fourth on the list, lost $4.3 billion on Monday.
That was a shade better than the $4.9 billion decline to Tesla and SpaceX founder Musk’s bottom line.
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each lost around $6 billion as of Monday, according to Forbes.
Larry Ellison, co-founder of software company Oracle, saw his wealth spike $3 billion overnight, before crashing on Monday losing the new gains, plus another $3 billion, according to Forbes.
The market mayhem followed a meek US jobs report Friday that saw a significant slowdown in hiring last month.
The July report showed the economy created 114,000 new jobs last month, well below analysts estimates of 175,000 new positions.
Unemployment rose to 4.3%, worse than the 4.1% expected by analysts.
The disappointing report, combined with the Feds reluctance to cut rates and doubts surrounding the tech industry, rattled the stock market.
Goldman Sachs analysts have added to the frenzy, increasing the likelihood of a recession to 25% from initial predictions of 15%.
Worldwide markets suffered and global fears grew over a US recession. Japan had its worst sell-off since the 1987 Black Monday crash as the Nikkei 225 fell more than 12.5%.
