Jeff Bezos No Longer the Richest Man in the World

The founder and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos lost his title as the richest man in the world after the closing of the stock markets.

Amazon shares fell 7% after stock markets closed, dropping Jeff Bezos' fortune to $ 103.9 billion. He becomes the second richest man on the planet, behind the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $ 105.7 billion.

Jeff Bezos had become the biggest fortune on the planet in 2018, also establishing himself as the first "centimillionaire" to appear in the Forbes 400 ranking with $ 160 billion, dethroning Bill Gates, who held the first place in 24 years.

But the fall of the fortune of the CEO of Amazon is not entirely due to the decline in the value of the shares of his company. Jeff Bezos also transferred a quarter of his Amazon assets to MacKenzie Bezos, his ex-wife, as part of their divorce deal earlier this year. MacKenzie Bezos is now at the head of a fortune of $32.7 billion and is now one of the 20 richest personalities in the world.

After the stock market closed, Amazon stocks lost almost 9% in value $ 1,624 in just 20 minutes. Since then, the online trading giant has rebounded slightly, rising to $ 1,657 per share.

The company has said it is investing heavily in logistics and its delivery infrastructure, with the goal of making delivery accessible in one business day to all Amazon Prime members. In July, Amazon announced it had spent "a little" more than the $ 800 million expected in the second quarter for delivery in 24 hours. The group does not want to reveal how much it invested in the third quarter. Nevertheless, Brian Olsavsky, the chief financial officer of Amazon, revealed Thursday that the company was planning to invest $ 1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, still to finance delivery in a business day.

Bill Gates appeared in the very first billionaire Forbes ranking in 1987, with a net worth of $ 1.25 billion. He later joined the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans in 1998, at the head of a $ 1.6 billion fortune, one year after Amazon's IPO.