10 billionaires who lost the most money in 2022, ranked: from Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout and Bill Gates’ philanthropy, to Jeff Bezos’ falling net worth from Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta troubles
- LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault has not been immune to rising inflation, which has wiped US$38 billion off his fortune, while Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin missed revenue targets
- Françoise Bettencourt Meyers’ L’Oréal suffered due to China’s zero-Covid policy, but Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ ex MacKenzie Scott gave huge chunks of their fortunes away
US$1.4 trillion: that’s how much the 500 wealthiest people in the world cumulatively lost in 2022 alone, Bloomberg has reported. To put that into perspective, that’s about as much as Spain’s GDP last year, which was US$1.43 trillion in 2021, according to The World Bank.
With the global economy in a downturn – the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs called the economic outlook “bleak”– not even the world’s wealthiest have been spared from financial woes.
So who are the billionaires who have seen their net worth drop the most? Most of the biggest losers are from Big Tech companies, many of which reported disappointing earnings in September and October.
Here’s a rundown of the top 10 billionaires who have lost the most so far this year according to Business Insider – and why.
10. Microsoft’s Bill Gates: US$27.3 billion
In July, Gates announced on Twitter: “I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation. I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world’s richest people.”
According to the BBC, Gates paired that announcement with a US$20 billion donation to his philanthropic fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.