It’s been an expensive two months for the 500 wealthiest people on the planet.
Their combined net worth fell $181 billion this week as US stock market indices -- S&P 500 Index and
Dow Jones Industrial Average -- suffered their steepest weekly drop in more than two years amid heated rhetoric over tariffs and retaliation. The group’s wealth has shrunk $436 billion since markets peaked on January 26.
Mark Zuckerberg bore the brunt this week with $10.3 billion wiped from his fortune on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He dropped three places to seventh on the ranking as a scandal unfolded at Facebook. The social network’s shares tumbled 14 per cent following reports that it let
Cambridge Analytica amass data on 50 million users.
The downdraft also caught Larry Ellison, down $7 billion as Oracle forecast slowing sales growth for cloud-related products. Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Amazon.com’s
Jeff Bezos and Alphabet’s Larry Page lost $17 billion combined.
The world’s 500 biggest fortunes now encompass $5.2 trillion, according to the index.
