Yahoo Finance Stock market tumble wipes $173 billion off the fortunes of the world's wealthiest
The world’s richest people saw billions of dollars wiped from their personal wealth in the past 48 hours, as the long-simmering US-China trade war heats up.
Wall Street suffered a dip on Monday, which saw around 3 per cent wiped off the US’ major three indices – by the close on Tuesday local time only some losses had been clawed back.
Meanwhile, the ASX was also hammered, with the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index down 162.2 points (2.44 per cent), to 6,478 points at the close of market on Tuesday AEST, while the broader All Ordinaries was down 164.2 points (2.45 per cent) to 6,546.4 points.
The mass sell-off saw 21 members of Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index cop a hit of US $1 billion (A$1,478,755) or more each, wiping a collective sum of US$117 billion (A$172.74 billion).
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The world’s richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, lost the most, with US$4.3 billion (A$5.07 billion) wiped out overnight.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ personal wealth fell by US$2 billion, while the world’s third-richest man, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) CEO Bernard Arnault, lost $3.2 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saw his wealth dip by US$2.8 billion, and the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ and investing veteran Warren Buffett saw his net worth dip US $2.1 billion, Forbes reported.
Suddenly the A$5,500 wiped from your savings doesn’t see as much.
Billionaires’ net wealth wiped – but don’t feel too sorry for them
While these sums seem like a lot to lose in one go, don’t feel too sorry for them: they’ve still got several billion dollars to their name.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index indicates Bezos’ net worth is still US$111 billion, and Bill Gates still calls US$105 billion his own.
Zuckerberg, the leader of the world’s biggest social media platform is worth US$72.2 billion, and Buffett has US$79.5 billion to his name.
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