Mark Zuckerberg Becomes Third Richest Person In The World
Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has officially become the third richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg is now worth $81.6 billion, $373 million more than fourth richest person in the world, famous American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist Warren Buffett, who is estimated to be worth $81.2 billion. Facebook CEO trails only Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
As Bloomberg noted, this is the first time in history that three of the wealthiest people in the world come from the technology sector, proving that tech is currently the most robust creator of wealth. According to Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s rise on the Billionaires Index was accelerated by investors, who remained unfazed by data privacy scandals Facebook had been the epicenter of.
On March 27, following a data privacy crisis, Facebook stock hit an all-time low of $152.22. This Friday, however, the stock closed at a record $203.23, further solidifying rapid recovery.
In its first-quarter earnings report, as the Inquisitr previously noted, Facebook said its revenue jumped 49 percent. Although Facebook stock had dropped 14 percent following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it went up 6.3 percent with the publishing of the quarterly report, and hasn’t stopped surging since.
Mark Zuckerberg tops Warren Buffett to become the world’s third-richest person https://t.co/UzLCrpfCnC pic.twitter.com/pD54lGi4ZP
— Bloomberg (@business) July 6, 2018
At the time, Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, remarked that “actions that lead to revenues speak louder than words.” That appears to be the case now as well. For instance, just last week UK lawmakers accused Facebook of being evasive in its answers to a British parliamentary committee.
“Facebook continue to display a pattern of evasive behavior – a pattern which has emerged over the course of our inquiry,” chair of Britain’s digital and media committee Damian Collins said, according to Reuters.
When Mark Zuckerberg said, as CNBC reported, that there hasn’t been “any meaningful impact” in the behavior of users or buying pattern of advertisers, he expressed regret over betraying the trust of Facebook users, but the company clearly did not betray the trust of its shareholders.
More recently, after the European Union announced what is considered the biggest overhaul of internet privacy rights in history, the GDPR, Zuckerberg said that the rules might impact his social network’s growth in Europe, but other than that, he did not seem worried, according to Recode.
Facebook CEO’s climb on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index clearly indicates that he was on the right track. Warren Buffett, Amancio Ortega, Bernard Arnault, and Carlos Slim — fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh of the world’s richest businessmen — have quite a bit of catching up to do.
