Billionaire Jeff Bezos loses $15billion in day

• Posted on August 6, 2024August 6, 2024
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Jeff Bezos lost $15billion from his wealth in a single day after a massive stock slump made the world’s 500 richest people including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk lose $134billion overall. 

According to Bloomberg, shares of Amazon.com Inc. went down by 8.8 percent on Friday as part of a wider sell-off in the market.  This dropped Bezos’ net worth to $191.5billion, because his wealth is being wrapped up in his company.

Bezos has been repeatedly offloading Amazon shares this year, selling $8.5billion in stocks in February and announcing plans to sell another $5billion worth of shares, which would still leave him with 912 million shares, or 8.8 percent of the stock. 

The report also claimed that Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc shares fell by 1.9 per cent, causing him to lose more than $3billion in value, while Musk’s net worth also dropped by $6.6billion as his Tesla shares plunged by 4.2 per cent.  

Friday’s $15.2billion loss is the third-worst wipeout Bezos has experienced after his wealth shrank by $36billion after his divorce in April 2019 and when Amazon’s shares fell by 14 per cent in April 2022.  

The recent plunge of Amazon shares comes after the company said that it would continue to invest heavily into AI, despite fears by investors all over the industry that the gains fueled by AI this year are overdone.

Other fortune 500 billionaires are Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison, whose wealth fell by $ 4.4 billion, as well as tech billionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page who each lost more than $3billion. 

According to the report, the aftermath of the Nasdaq index falling on Friday was still felt on Monday as stock markets around the globe continued plunging amid fears the US economy may be on track for a recession as Japan suffered its worst sell-off since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987.