The richest people on Earth grew richer this year, adding US$92 billion to their collective fortune in the face of falling energy prices and geopolitical turmoil.
The net worth of the world’s 400 wealthiest billionaires on Monday stood at US$4.1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people.
The biggest gainer was Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) cofounder Jack Ma (馬雲).
Ma, 50, added US$25.1 billion to his fortune, riding a 56 percent surge in shares of China’s largest e-commerce company since its September initial public offering.
With a US$28.7 billion fortune, Ma briefly passed Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) as Asia’s richest person.
“I am nothing but happy when young people from China do well,” Li, 86, said through a spokeswoman in Hong Kong.
Global stocks rose this year, with the MSCI World Index advancing 4.3 percent during the year to close at 1,731.71 on Monday.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 13 percent to close at 2,090.57. The STOXX Europe 600 gained 4.9 percent to close at 344.27.
Two of the year’s other biggest gainers were Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman Warren Buffett and Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg of the US.
The 84-year-old Buffett added US$13.7 billion to his net worth this year.
Buffett passed Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim on Dec. 5 to become the world’s second-richest person.
Microsoft Corp cofounder Bill Gates was up US$9.1 billion during the year. The 59-year-old remains the world’s richest person with an US$87.6 billion fortune.
Zuckerberg, head of the world’s largest social-networking company, gained US$10.6 billion this year.
Nobody was hit harder than Vladimir Evtushenkov. Once Russia’s 14th-richest person, the 66-year-old lost 80 percent of his wealth, dropping him from the Bloomberg ranking. He was sentenced to house arrest by a Moscow court in September after a money-laundering investigation connected to the US$2.5 billion purchase of shares in oil producer OAO Bashneft. Evtushenkov’s fortune has fallen US$8.1 billion, the most of any Russian this year.
Viktor Vekselberg surpassed Alisher Usmanov as Russia’s richest person after Usmanov’s MegaFon OAO lost almost half its value since June. Vekselberg is worth US$14.1 billion, while Usmanov fell 32 percent to US$13.8 billion.
One of only a few Russians among the world’s 400 richest people who gained in the year was aluminum billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who added US$1.6 billion to his US$8.2 billion fortune. He is the world’s 154th-richest person.
“The reputation of Russian business in the West has become worse, and will continue to get worse,” said Stanislav Belkovsky, a Kremlin adviser during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first term who now consults for Moscow’s Institute for National Strategy, a research firm. “That means that the capabilities for Russia’s billionaires to run businesses abroad are going to decrease.”
Russian billionaires were not the only ones to suffer losses. Sheldon Adelson, the gambling mogul who controls Las Vegas Sands Corp, the world’s largest casino company, fell US$8.7 billion in net worth.
Macau’s casinos are looking at their first down-year in revenue since the market was opened to foreign operators in 2002, after China cracked down on corruption and high-rollers shunned the gambling enclave. More than half of the company’s US$13.8 billion in revenue last year came from Macau.
Adelson’s decline was followed by Amazon.com Inc chairman Jeffrey Bezos. The 50-year-old had US$7.2 billion trimmed from his fortune as the Seattle-based company lost ground in the cloud computing market to crosstown competitor Microsoft.
China’s 10 richest people have added almost US$48 billion to their combined fortune so far this year.
Following Ma’s US$25.1 billion gain, technology entrepreneurs Richard Liu (劉強東) of online retailer JD.com (京東) and Robin Li (李彥宏) of Baidu Inc (百度) added a combined US$8 billion.
The title of Asia’s richest person could be challenged by Dalian Wanda Group Co (大連萬達集團) chairman Wang Jianlin (王健林), whose company staged an initial public offering of its commercial properties division this month. Wang has a net worth of US$25.3 billion, gaining US$12.8 billion during the year.
Bloomberg News uncovered 86 new or hidden billionaires who had never appeared on an international wealth ranking. Among them were the six heirs to a US$13 billion Monaco fortune that were unveiled after the family’s matriarch, Helene Pastor, was gunned down in a parking lot in Nice, France, in May. The fortune spans two branches of the Pastor family, which built much of Monaco’s skyline and owns thousands of apartments.
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