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Bill Gates Overtakes Jeff Bezos to Become the World’s Richest Person as Amazon Stock Slides

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has taken over Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person. The Bloomberg billionaires index, which tracks the net worth of the world’s wealthiest, has indicated that Gates has overtaken Bezos based on an over 40% increase in his 1% stake in technology giant Microsoft and his investments in his family office Cascade. 

For the first time in two years, Gates has taken over the top spot after reports emerged that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) granted Microsoft JEDI contract for a $10 billion cloud computing contract in October. Microsoft share also increased slightly by about 4% at the announcement which many believe to be sudden.

For a brief period, Gates overtook Bezos after Amazon reported that its year-on-year profit fell 28% in September and Amazon shares dipped slightly at the news. But then Bezos came back to return his former position after the stock regained their lost value.

This puts Gates with a net worth of $110 billion while Bezos has a net worth of $108.2 Billion. Bezos would still have been at the top spot if not for his divorce settlement with his ex-wife Mckenzie after he gave her about a quarter of his holdings in Amazon (which was worth about $38 billion at the time) he of course still owns about 12% of the retail giant of course. 

In general, Gates will have been the world’s wealthiest person by a far cry considering his numerous contributions to charity via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has been one of the foremost philanthropic organizations in the world with about $35 billion of his wealth donated since 1994 to the foundation. 

Amazon in recent times has had more than its fair share of issues this year. Following Nike’s decision to dissolve its trading partnership where the footwear retailer sold original merchandise but has been frustrated by reports of counterfeit products on the technology giant’s retail platform. The recent reports of about 28% drop in profits didn’t help either as profits fell in a less-than-expected performance following a boom period in the previous year. The loss of the cloud computing contract hasn’t helped issues as this indicates that Amazon cloud computing business is still yet to win the confidence of the United States government who has chosen arch-rival Microsoft to handle its operations in this recent project.

All this comes at a time that the United States Democratic caucus is considering massive tax increases for America’s wealthiest which isn’t going down well with Bill Gates. “If I’d had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine. When you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over,” said Gates.

The math puts this at about $10 billion which doesn’t seem to be a pretty situation as well. 

As of the time of writing, Microsoft shares stood at $149.97 which represents a 1.29% increase at the close of business on Friday the 15th of November 2019 while Amazon stood at $1,739.49 which represents a decline of 0.86%.

Bill Gates Overtakes Jeff Bezos to Become the World’s Richest Person as Amazon Stock Slides

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