Billionaires' Wealth Rises To $10.2 Trillion Amid Covid Crisis
Billionaires' wealth rises to $10.2 trillion amid Covid crisis.' Super-rich increase fortunes by more than a quarter during market turmoil. By Rupert Neate, The Guardian, Oct. 7, 2020.
The world’s billionaires “did extremely well” during the coronavirus pandemic, growing their already-huge fortunes to a record high of $10.2tn (£7.8tn). A report by Swiss bank UBS found that billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes.
The report found that billionaires had mostly benefited from betting on the recovery of global stock markets when they were at their nadir during the global lockdowns in March and April. UBS said billionaires’ wealth had hit “a new high, surpassing the previous peak of $8.9tn reached at the end of 2017”. The number of billionaires has also hit a new high of 2,189, up from 2,158 in 2017.
Josef Stadler, the head of UBS’s global family office department that deals directly with the world’s richest people, said: “Billionaires did extremely well during the Covid crisis, not only [did] they ride the storm to the downside, but also gained up on the upside [as stock markets rebounded].”...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/07/covid-19-crisis-boosts-the-fortunes-of-worlds-billionaires
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The bottom half is worth around 450 billion USD (it was 426 billion in 2017) Even if it is 500 billion, the top 4 still have more
Bezos alone hit 200 billion USD in August He has dropped a bit, but the swings are so large he could soon flop over it again
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5c3f734e3d78
