Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos Briefly Became World’s Richest Man

This Thursday, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos became the world’s richest man for a few hours, toppling Microsoft Father Bill Gates himself, who has been at the top of the list for years. It would appear that the boost came via a surge in stock prices of Amazon in anticipation of healthy quarterly earnings numbers.

In Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Amazon’s stock climbed to $1,083.31 per share in New York during the afternoon. By the time trading closed, Bezos was sitting on $92.3 billion, which propelled him to the top of the list. In contrast, Gates had only $90.8 billion at the time.

The achievement did not last for very long since Bezos’ net worth quickly went back down and as of writing, he has $89.3 billion. This still puts him second to the Microsoft founder and is a remarkable progress for the retail chain mogul since he was actually in fourth place until a few months ago, Bloomberg reports.

What helped Bezos grace the top spot for even a little while is the 40 percent surge that he got via the 17 percent share of Amazon. This resulted in another $24.5 billion to his overall net worth. This allowed him to overtake Warren Buffet and Amancio Ortega.

As great as briefly being the wealthiest man on earth might have been, the news is not all sunshine and rainbows for Bezos. As a CNBC Op-Ed notes, this is bound to cause the billionaire more grief from his enemies, chief of whom is President Trump himself.

Unlike Gates, who has been ostensibly staying away from politics in his twilight years, Bezos’ Washington Post has been a constant thorn in the current administration’s side for years. This could result in more pressure exerted on Amazon with regards to the taxes that the retail giant is not paying via third-party sellers.