Trump Victory Adds Record $64 Billion To Wealth of Top 10 Richest People in the World 💸

Share surge increases Elon Musk’s fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin & Bill Gates also benefit, The Guardian, Nov. 7, 24 Ed
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The wealth of the 10 richest people in the world – a list dominated by US tech billionaires – increased by a record amount after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, according to a widely cited index. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated that the world’s 10 wealthiest people gained nearly $64bn (about £49.5bn) on Wednesday, the largest daily increase since the index began in 2012.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, registered the largest increase with a $26.5bn addition to his fortune, which now stands at $290bn. The prominent backer of Trump’s campaign, benefited from a surge in the share price of Tesla, the electric carmaker where he is chief executive and in which he owns a 13% stake. The gains came as tech business leaders, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook parent Meta, and Apple’s Tim Cook publicly congratulated Trump on his election win.

Much of the gains for the top 10 was because of a surge in US stocks on Wednesday as investors anticipated a low-tax and regulation-light policy platform.

Other beneficiaries were Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the world’s second richest person, who added $7bn to his near-$230bn fortune, and Larry Ellison, the chair of the software company Oracle, historically a Republican supporter, who increased his wealth by nearly $10bn to $193bn. Other members of the top 10 whose wealth grew included Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates, the former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, and Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

However, Trump has also expressed his frustration with Google on the campaign trail, after threatening in September to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against the search company if he won the election. He claimed that Google was displaying negative news articles about him but not about his opponent, Kamala Harris – a claim Google denied. The only member of the wealth elite to lose money on Wednesday was the French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, whose fortune decreased by nearly $3bn...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10