Despite the fact that Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) was constantly in news for the negative reasons in the recent months, it finally tasted some magnificent success! Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg becomes the third richest person on the planet. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index constantly tracks the world’s richest people. Presently, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has clocked a whopping $82.1 billion. The ranking, which keeps a track of the world’s 500 richest people, is updated after the close of each trading day in New York.
The World’s Richest People With Net Worth
If you’re curious about who did Mark Zuckerberg leapfrog to occupy the position, it is Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A). With a net worth of $82.1 billion, Mark Zuckerberg now stands behind only two people in the world – Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO of Amazon.com, with a net worth of $144 billion and Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft Corporation, having a net worth of $ 94.9 billion.
An amazingly interesting fact here to observe is that all three wealthiest people on the globe are tech titans – they all hail from the technology world. Not only this, six of the ten world’s richest people have acquired their fortunes from technology, and all of them being men. The fortunes garnered through technology contributes around one-fifth of the more than $5 trillion in wealth, as per the records of the Bloomberg index, which is way more than any other sector. This has yet again proved that technology is the most robust creator of wealth.
Mark Zuckerberg achieved this milestone after Facebook shares soared 2.4% to a record $203.23, on last Friday. This also portrayed how little the investors were affected by the social media giant’s crushing wave of negative attention. The company stock prices have escalated by almost 15 per cent, even though after hitting an eight-month low towards the end of March this year. This happened after a series of complaints were registered against Facebook over controversial data sharing by the company. For those who are aloof, Facebook permitted political strategy firm to access the private data of 87 million users. This the same firm which helped Donald Trump’s campaign. This incident had hammered its shares to a great extent, bringing them down to an eight-month low of $152.22 on March 27.
Warren Buffett, who was replaced by Zuckerberg to be the third richest person, has already been the wealthiest person on the planet. However, presently Facebook’s CEO has about $373 million more fortune than Buffett, the 87-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway. You must be surprised as to how once the richest man slipped to the fourth position, right? Well, there is a very noble and genuine cause behind this – Charity. He started donating a significant portion of his wealth to charity since the year 2006. He has donated about 290 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to charities, most of it to Gates’s foundation. You would be astonished to know that those donated shares are currently worth more than $50 billion, as stated in the data compiled by Bloomberg. However, Facebook CEO has a heart of gold too. He, along with his wife, Priscilla Chan, have pledged to give away 99 per cent of their Facebook stock over their lifetimes.
What’s past is past. Right now, we should let the Facebook CEO enjoy relish his success because he deserves every bit of it!
