A surge in price of shares catapulted Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man, right before Amazon.com was supposed to reveal its earnings report. Bezos controls around 17 percent of Amazon shares and has been in the billionaire index for the past 20 years.
Amazon shares rose 1.3 percent, which is more than $15 each, giving Jeff Bezos a $90.9 billion net worth. He surpassed Gates by a “mere” $200 million.
An Amazon share is now worth $1,065.92. The rise being attributed not just to the Amazon Prime service, but also to Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division. Investor’s enthusiasm and the Amazon shares’ price is so dramatic that not even Bloomberg’s billionaires index has been updated.
“Amazon Prime is why so much physical retail is going away. Anyone who joins Prime shops in retail stores 10 percent less, and that number will keep accelerating as Amazon adds more inventory”, said Michael Pachter, the Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst.
While Jeff Bezos now proudly wears the title of the world’s richest man, Amazon itself is expected to post a quarterly revenue of $37.2 billion, 22 percent more than in 2016.
The world’s richest men top is now this:
- Jeff Bezos with $90.9 billion,
- Bill Gates with $90.7 billion
- Amancio Ortega (clothing empire Inditex’s founder) with $82.7 billion
- Waren Buffet with $74.5 billion
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is not far off in the top, with his $70.5 billion net work.
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