[Asia Economy New York=Special Correspondent Joselgina] This year, as investment sentiment rapidly froze due to recession concerns, the assets of the world's billionaires have also sharply declined. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and the world's richest person, lost 84 trillion won, while Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, lost 77 trillion won. However, Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and known as the 'investment master,' saw his assets increase.
According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index on the 23rd (local time), the total assets of the world's top 10 richest people decreased by $229.5 billion (about 290 trillion won) compared to the beginning of the year. This figure was updated based on the closing prices of the New York Stock Exchange on that day, and when estimated for the top 50 billionaires, the total asset decline reached a staggering $473.4 billion (about 598 trillion won).
This loss is analyzed to be due to the recent spread of recession concerns causing a sharp drop in the stock market. This year, the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq index have fallen by more than 16% and 26%, respectively. On a weekly basis, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have shown declines for seven consecutive weeks, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen for eight consecutive weeks. However, as the New York stock market closed higher on this day, the asset decline was reduced compared to the previous day's closing prices.
Elon Musk, the world's richest CEO, lost $66.5 billion (about 84 trillion won) on paper this year. Since most of Musk's assets are stocks of Tesla and SpaceX, the recent bear market impact appears to have been significant. Bezos's assets also decreased by $61 billion (about 77 trillion won). Bernard Arnault, chairman of France's Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), and Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MS), each saw their assets decline by $51.8 billion (about 65.5 trillion won) and $19.6 billion (about 24.8 trillion won), respectively.
Among the world's top five billionaires, only CEO Buffett saw an increase in total assets. His assets increased by $3.29 billion (about 4 trillion won) this year, totaling $112 billion (about 141.6 trillion won). Among the world's top 10 billionaires, Indian businessmen Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Enterprises, and Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, also saw their total assets increase.
Billionaires with high investment proportions in cryptocurrencies experienced even steeper asset declines. Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese-Canadian founder of Binance, saw his assets decrease by $80.5 billion (about 101.8 trillion won) this year alone. This is the largest asset decline among the top 50 billionaires. With his holdings sharply reduced to $15.3 billion (about 19.3 trillion won), he dropped to 111th place in the global billionaire rankings as of that day.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that amid the sharp stock market decline, the total asset decrease of the world's top 50 billionaires based on the previous day's closing prices reached $563 billion (about 712 trillion won), exceeding Sweden's annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The media added that this amount is larger than the market capitalization of all companies in the S&P 500 index except for six companies.
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