For those who take even a token
interest in the world’s rich and famous over the past decade or two they will,
at minimum, know that for a better part of the years in that time period, the
wealthiest man in the planet was a pioneering software developer and visionary.
That is of course Bill Gates, co-founder and one-time chairman and CEO of
Microsoft, which dominated the personal computer software market. Forbes named him “world’s richest man”
from 1995 to 2017 (minus four years), until his position was usurped by Amazon
founder/president/CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos held the title since, but Friday last
week saw Gates win back the billionaires’ crown.
CNN has it that shifting and recent activities on the parts of Bill
Gates and Jeff Bezos, as well as their respective companies, have landed the
father of Microsoft back in the saddle as the richest man in the world. This
was confirmed by the Bloomberg Billionaires’
Index ranking which saw the net worth of Gates holding at $110 billion as of
November 16. Actually, Gates did manage to briefly one-up Bezos last October following
an Amazon report of 28% profit loss, though it did not stick for very long.
This new ranking, on the other
hand, looks to last for a potentially longer period of time. Microsoft has
recently reported a 48% increase in shares for the year 2019, which in turn has
enlarged the stake of its co-founder and thus his personal net worth. Bezos on
the other hand, currently has a net worth straddling between $108-109 billion,
due to giving up some of his Amazon stakes to his ex-wife McKenzie Bezos, with
their divorce finalized last April. The fact that Microsoft also won a $10-billion
contract with the Pentagon for a cloud computing system over Amazon last month helped
considerably as well.
Bill Gates was declared the
richest man in the world for the first time in 1995, when he boasted a net
worth of $12.9 billion according to Cnet.
That definitely seems like small potatoes compared to billionaire values at
present. The now-aged 64 business magnate and philanthropist stepped down as
Microsoft CEO in 2000, and then as chairman in 2014. At present he is full-time
working at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation private charity, though he
still carries the title of tech advisor to current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Despite having sold $35 billion
of stock to fund the foundation he started with wife Melinda, Bill Gates still
has enough to keep him on the top wealth rankings for a long time. He has also
recently commented on Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth
Warren’s proposed “expanded wealth tax,” which targets billionaires like him.
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