$US14 million a day: How the world’s rich have been raking it in
Andrew Forrest has had a good year, Gina Rinehart not so much and Gautum Adani has had a shocker, but there was no room for Queensland’s own Clive Palmer in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. (file image)
According to the index, Elon Musk retains the number one spot as the world’s richest man after France’s Bernard Arnault once threatened.
Despite Musk’s obvious problems with Twitter, which some believe is only worth about a third of what he paid for it, he was still worth $US247 billion ($A368 billion), an increase of $US110 billion so far this year.
Arnault, who founded LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, was listed by Forbes earlier this year as the world’s richest man with $US220 billion but Bloomberg this week marked him down to $US199 billion.
Adani, who took a massive hit from the scandal in January when an activist report raised questions about stock manipulation within his conglomerate which includes the Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland, has lost $US60 billion and is no longer India’s richest man.
“Adani, chairman of Adani Group, also posted the biggest one-day loss of any billionaire, shedding about $US20.8 billion on Jan. 27, after short-seller Hindenburg Research accused his conglomerate of accounting fraud and stock manipulation — a claim Adani denies,” the Bloomberg Index said.
According to Bloomberg, each member of the index made an average of $US14 million a day over the past six months and the world’s 500 richest people added $US852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023.
It found that Andrew Forrest was now worth $US23.2 billion, an increase of $US2 billion for the year so far. Rinehart dropped $US3 billion to be worth $US20.9 billion.
Property developer Harry Triguboff was listed at 109 with $US16 billion, having added $US3.2 billion in the year so far.
Atlassian founders Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar were worth $US10.5 billion and $US10.4 billion respectively having added $US2.3 billion to their wealth. The next Australian was Westfield founder Frank Lowy with $US7.6 billion.
The poorest billionaire on the list at number 500 was worth $US6.8 billion.
While Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg flirt with scheduling a cage match, Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer came out on top in dollar terms, Bloomberg said.
