Zuckerberg joins rota of stung tech billionaires, with 50pc dip
By John Otini, November 15, 2022Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has shrunk by almost half, pulling him 25 positions down the billionaires’ club pecking order.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Meta Platforms Inc, the digital company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, had a net worth of $125.5 billion (Sh15.3 trillion) at the start of 2022, making him the sixth-richest person in the world.
The Facebook founder has lost more than $81 billion (Sh9.9 trillion) in less than 12 months. This is after his company reported the second straight quarter of disappointing returns as advertisers cut back on spending due to rising inflation, even as the Metaverse vision struggled to take off.
“The dip has primarily been caused by losses in advertising revenue due to privacy policy changes by Apple, as well as competition from fellow social media app TikTok. Its operating profits were also affected by the company’s heavy investment in Metaverse,” Forbes reported.
His ranking on the Bloomberg billionaires list has fallen from number four to number 27 as the global recession eats away the wealth of most billionaires.
However, nearly all technology billionaires have lost heavily in the same period — Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison being among the big losers.
The total wealth of the world’s billionaires has dipped from a record high last year amid a drop in global stock markets since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the planet’s richest people still holding a combined $12.7 trillion (£9.7tn) in assets.
The Tesla CEO has also been among the largest losers as his wealth has tumbled by over $80 billion (Sh9.8 trillion) in the same period. This was partly due to acquisition of struggling media company Twitter.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has also lost $68 billion (Sh8.3 trillion) in the same period as technology stocks shed off the rally that came with the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to CNBC, Larry Page — who co-founded Google and owns 12 per cent of Alphabet, alongside Sergey Brin — had a comparable decline in net worth. His losses totalled $39.2 billion (Sh4.8 trillion), most likely as a result of Alphabet missing its goals and YouTube advertising revenue decreasing in its September report.
But entrepreneurs in manufacturing and energy sectors have been the key winners, with India’s Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani seeing gains. Gautam has gained $61 (Sh7.4 trillion) in the same period.
Gautam Adani is the chairman of the $21 billion (Sh2.6 trillion) revenue Adani Group, with interests in ports, airports, power generation and transmission, green energy, edible oils, cement and real estate.
Fashion mogul and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, who briefly held the title of richest person in the world in 2021, is now included among the billionaires who have suffered the worst losses, after his net worth fell by US$38.2 billion.
Other big losers include Binance founder and CEO Cahopeng Zhao, who at one point was worth US$96 billion, has accumulated losses of US$72.6 billion in the cryptocurrency crash that caused digital currencies to lose US$2 trillion in value.
And the extreme case of crypto exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who woke up on Monday last week still a billionaire, but by Friday his fortune had been completely wiped out.
According to Entrepreneur, the French billionaire lost US$4.06 billion in just September alone as a result of new inflation data and rising interest rates.
Binance founder and CEO Cahopeng Zhao, who at one point was worth US$96 billion, has accumulated losses of US$72.6 billion in the cryptocurrency crash that caused digital currencies to lose US$2 trillion in value, according to PBS.
Binance released a report in September announcing that “the crypto market is crashing hard”. The crash was attributed to macroeconomic factors, as the US dollar showed increased strength versus bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency.
However, the most extreme case is that of crypto exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who woke up on Monday last week still a billionaire, even as his cryptocurrency empire was beginning to unravel. By Friday, his fortune was completely wiped out.
Based on net worth calculations by Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried was worth about $16 billion (Sh1.9 trillion) at the start of last week. But as his crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, the value of his assets was reduced to zero in what Bloomberg called “one of history’s greatest-ever destructions of wealth.”