The world’s 500 richest people have significantly increased their wealth, collectively surpassing $10 trillion in 2024. The driver of increased profits was the growth of shares of US technology companies. At the top of the list of the biggest winners thanks to the ups and downs of the financial market are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang.
The world’s 500 richest people collectively earned over $10 trillion.
Author: Ekaterina Alipova
The first eight in the top 500, in addition to the top three entered Also Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, together earned more than $600 billion. This is a share of 43% of the total increase of $1.5 trillion among the top 500 billionaires from the Bloomberg index.
The richest billionaire, Elon Musk, increased his fortune by $213 billion in 2024, to $442.1 billion. They are separated from Jeff Bezos in second place by an unprecedented $237 billion.
In addition to the rise in S&P 500 stocks, profits were also boosted by Donald Trump’s victory: in the five weeks after the election, billionaires represented in the index earned a total of $505 billion – that is, 34% of total annual income.
Among those who increased their wealth the most in 2024, Bloomberg analysts name Trump himself (his company DJT, part of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., grew by 95% and is valued at $7 billion), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (increased his fortune by $76 billion), Mark Zuckerberg (despite a record fine of $841 million from the EU antitrust authority, his fortune increased by $81 billion) and etc.
But there were also those who suffered losses in the past year. They include French luxury goods billionaires (Bernard Arnault, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and François Pinault), Latin American tycoons Ricardo Salinas and Carlos Slim and Vietnamese billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong.
Of the Chinese oligarchs, Temu CEO Colin Huang was the most surprising: he started the year as the richest man in China, but ended with a loss of $18 billion (his company’s shares fell 29% in one day).
If we talk about Russians, then in 2024, the 25 richest businessmen from the Russian Federation, included in Bloomberg’s top 500, collectively increased their wealth by $18.465 billion – to $347.62 billion.
NLMK beneficiary Vladimir Lisin had the most successful year (+$5 billion), although in terms of wealth he is inferior to Vladimir Potanin (he remains the richest Russian in the top 500, although he increased his wealth by only $736 million over the past year). In third place is Vagit Alekperov (+$2.59 billion).
Cover photo: Unsplash
Source: rb.ru
