RAHUL SHARMA DEBT CONNECT IN MANCHESTER, UK,
Three years ago, Jeff Bezos was struggling to retain his
title as the world’s richest man but in recent months, booming demand for
Amazon’s services has sent his wealth sky-rocketing.
At $143bn (£117bn), his fortune now dwarfs that of rivals.
The 56-year-old is one third wealthier than Bill Gates with $106bn. Mark
Zuckerberg, in third place, has a fortune of $78bn.
Amazon's dizzying success – which has accelerated under
lockdown – has prompted some US publications to question whether the Amazon
founder could one day become the world’s first trillionaire.
“The Jeff Bezos Wealth Surge is an unprecedented dynamic in
the history of modern markets,” researchers from the Institute of Policy
Studies (IPS) wrote last month. “Tracking Bezos’ wealth requires a real-time
hour-by-hour tracker.”
That is no exaggeration. Since the start of the year, his
net wealth has spurted by $28bn, equal to the GDP of Honduras, according to
Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Revenues for the first three months of the year hit $75.5bn
and shares in the business are up more than 40pc since the middle of March.
