The global "scrooges" have something to celebrate in 2017: the heritage of the richest people in the world has increased overall by 23%, or $1.000 trillion, to about $5.300 trillion. The rise, four times higher than that seen in 2016, was favored in particular by the rally in the equity markets.
This is what emerges from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which monitors the wealth of the 500 richest people in the world. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the one who got richer the most: in the year that is about to end he added 34,2 billion to his assets, which last October allowed him to surpass Bill Gates and become the richest person in the world (99,6 billion dollars against 91,3 billion of the co-founder of Microsoft). It must be said that Gates has decided to donate a large part of his assets to charity, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Billionaire George Soros has also donated a chunk of his wealth which has dropped him to 195th place on the Bloomberg list with a net worth of $8 billion.
Scrolling through the list, they are found 38 Chinese billionaires (they added a total of 177 billion, 65% more than in 2016 and the largest increase among the "scrooges" of the 49 countries in the ranking) and there are 27 Russians, who added 29 billion to 275 billion. However, the Americans take the lion's share: there are 159 billionaires on the list, who have seen their assets rise by 18%, or 315 billion, to a total of 2.000 billion. In particular, the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg saw his assets increase by 22,6 billion, 45%, but made it known that he will sell 18% of his share in the social network to fulfill his promise to give the majority of his wealth (72,6 billion) to charity.
There are only 58 billionaires who have seen their assets drop, losing a total of 46 billion: among these there are French telecommunications tycoon Patrick Drahi (-39% to 6,3 billion) and the Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal (-1,9 billion to 17,8 billion) due to the corruption scandal that engulfed the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
