The world's 500 richest people lost $134 billion (more than €123 billion) of their fortune on Friday due to the stock slump. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in particular, suffered a major blow.
Stock markets in New York fell sharply on Friday following a much weaker-than-anticipated jobs report for July. It showed that job growth in the US slowed more than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to the highest since October 2021, igniting worries that the economy could be falling into a recession.
As a result, stock markets in New York closed with heavy losses on Friday, hitting the world's richest hard, financial news agency Bloomberg calculated.
Bezos’ net worth shrank by $15.2 billion (€13.9 billion) in one day to $191.5 billion (€175 billion), leading the wide-ranging slump. It marks the third-worst one-day loss for Bezos, who is no longer a top executive, but still has a large stake in the company, which saw its shares drop by 8.8% after the online shop presented disappointing results.
Tesla CEO and owner of the social media platform X, Elon Musk, also lost a lot on Friday. Musk, who is currently the world's richest man according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, saw his total net worth drop by $6.57 billion (€5.92 billion) to $235 billion (€215.2 billion).
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Frenchman Bernard Arnault, who is the top executive of LVMH, the French luxury company behind brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Givenchy, lost $1.21 billion (€1.1 billion). He ranks number three on the list of richest people, with assets worth about $182 billion (€166.6 billion).
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which includes social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, also suffered significant losses. His net worth dropped by $3.39 billion (€3.1 billion) due to share price declines in the tech sector, and is now $174 billion (€159 billion), placing him fourth in the ranking of the world's richest people.
