The world’s billionaires have had a tough year, having lost nearly $2 trillion combined in 2022, after adding trillions to their collective fortunes in the previous two years, Forbes magazine has reported.
According to its estimates, American billionaires were the hardest hit – losing $660 billion collectively amid the plunge in tech stock prices due to rising interest rates, soaring inflation and a worsening economy.
The report highlighted that Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk saw his fortune diminish the most. Musk’s net worth nosedived by about $115 billion last year, Forbes calculated. Tesla’s stock price is down nearly 70% for the year.
Although Musk lost his crown as the world’s richest person last year, he is still the wealthiest in the United States, with a net worth of nearly $139 billion as of December 27, according to Forbes.
And while Musk is “the biggest loser of 2022,” according to the publication, he’s not the only billionaire whose net worth took a hit. The five other US billionaires who lost most in 2022, according to Forbes, are: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (-$80 billion), Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent company) co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (-$78 billion), Google co-founder and board member Larry Page (-$40 billion), Nike chair Phil Knight (-$18.3 billion), The Estée Lauder Companies chair emeritus Leonard Lauder (-$9.8 billion).
The report also showed that the number of billionaires has fallen too, from 2,671 to 2,523, per Forbes’ real-time tracker, as high-profile moguls like FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Kanye West and Rivian founder RJ Scaringe have dropped from the ranks.
