The Rich Get Richer: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk Top Forbes' 2021 List Of World's Billionaires

Forbes Magazine has compiled the 2021 edition of the World’s Billionaire’s list, with 2,755 men and women ranked as the richest people on Earth — up from 660 more than a year ago.

It Was A Very Good Year: Although many people struggled financially over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s wealthiest people didn’t worry about money. Quite the opposite, actually, as 86% of those ranked by Forbes are richer today versus one year ago.

Benzinga readers might recognize the names of the people who were named by Forbes as the 10 richest billionaires based on their net worth:

• Jeff Bezos, chairman and CEO of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN founder, chairman and CEO topped this year’s list with a net worth of $177 billion, up from $113 billion last year.

• Elon Musk, the self-crowned technoking of Tesla Inc. TSLA, placed second with a net worth of $151 billion, which was considerably higher than the $24.6 billion level he registered in 2020.

• Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA LVMUY and the sole European in the top 10, came in third with a net worth of $150 billion, up from last year’s level of $76 billion.

• Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation MSFT, was the fourth-place finisher with a $124 billion net worth, up from $98 billion one year ago.

• Mark Zuckerberg, CEO at Facebook Inc. FB, pulled a fifth-place ranking with a net worth of $90 billion, up from last year’s level of $54.7 billion.

• Warren Buffett, the 90-year-old chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc BRK, was the oldest member of the top 10 and the sixth-place finisher with a net worth of $96 billion, up from last year’s $67.5 billion.

• Larry Ellison, co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer at Oracle Corporation ORCL, ranked seventh with a $93 billion net worth, up from last year’s $59 billion.

• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, formerly the CEO and president of Alphabet GOOGL GOOG, were eighth and ninth place finishers, respectively. Page’s $91.5 billion net worth was up from $50.9 billion in 2020 while Brin’s $89 billion was well above the $49.1 billion level of one year earlier.

• Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd., was the sole Indian in the top 10 and the only corporate head of a company not publicly traded in the U.S. Ambani’s $84.5 billion net worth was up from the $36.8 billion level of 2020.

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Elsewhere Among The Ultra-Rich: While the executives in the top 10 all enjoyed considerable year-over-year expansions of their net worth, not everyone on the Forbes list saw their wealth blossom.

Donald Bren, chairman and owner of Irvine Company LLC, who is described by Forbes as “America’s richest real estate baron,” saw his net worth drop from $15.5 billion in 2020 to $15.3 this year — although he still ranked an admirable 132nd place. Hong Kong-based Joseph Lau, former chairman of property developer Chinese Estates, saw his 2020 net worth of $16.4 billion decline to a current level of $13.6 billion, placing him at 155.

The Forbes list also included a pair of business moguls who found second careers in politics. Michael Bloomberg, the media tycoon and former New York City mayor, placed 20th with a $59 billion net worth, up from last year’s $48 billion. And former President Donald Trump was somewhere in the middle of the list — 1,299th place, to be exact — with a $2.4 billion net worth that was up from last year’s $2.1 billion. The uptick in Trump’s wealth marked the first time that his net worth increased since he stepped out of the private sector in 2017 and into the White House.

(Image by Mohamed Hassan / Pixabay)