Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday became the third richest person on the planet, going past Berkshire Hathaway promoter Warren Buffett, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, a daily ranking of the world’s wealthiest people.
Bezos sneaked past Buffett, but just about. As of July 22, Bezos had a net worth of $65.1 billion whereas the Omaha-based Buffett was worth $65 billion.
In April, Amazon had seen its first quarter sales go up 28%, including a 64% bump up at its cloud computing division, Bloomberg reported. To be sure, Bezos' rise to the third spot is, in part, thanks to the fact that Buffett donated more than $2 billion worth of his stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this month.
Microsoft founder Gates, and Spanish business tycoon Amancio Ortega Gaona are the first and the second richest men according to the index (see chart).
The Bloomberg report said that Bezos’ rank could go higher, just behind Gates. “Carlos Kirjner of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. set his Amazon price target at $1,000 in May, 34% above Thursday’s close of $744.43. With the stock at that price, Bezos’s fortune would be about $86 billion, just under Gates’s current level," the report said.
Bezos' Amazon is making big strides in India and has committed an investment of over $5 billion in the country's nascent e-commerce industry where it is competing with homegrown player Flipkart for the leadership.
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