Billionaires' Worst Year?: World's Ultra-Rich People Who Lost Billions in 2022
- According to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, most of the losses were self-inflicted with Twitter owner Elon Musk's antics costing him $138 billion
- The Russian invasion of Ukraine also dealt a big blow to most big businesses against the backdrop of widespread inflation
- Chinese-Cypriot businesswoman Yang Huiyan lost the title of Asia’s wealthiest woman in July following China's property crisis
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The world's wealthiest people lost an estimated US$ 1.4 Trillion in 2022.
Source: Getty Images
According to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, most of the losses were self-inflicted with Twitter owner Elon Musk's antics costing him $138 billion.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine also dealt a big blow to most big businesses against the backdrop of widespread inflation and aggressive central bank tightening.
"The year was a dramatic comedown for a group of billionaires whose fortunes swelled to unfathomable heights in the COVID-19 era of easy money," Bloomberg stated.
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During the year under review, Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Changpeng Zhao (CEO of Binance) and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg lost a combined US$392 billion from their cumulative net worth.
World billionaires who lost their wealth
Elon Musk
Elon Musk was stripped of his title as the world's richest person on Wednesday, December 7.
The Tesla CEO lost the fit after the company share price dropped dramatically, dipping his net worth down by $100 million.
The new Twitter owner was overtaken by the CEO of Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, Bernard Arnault.
Forbes reported Arnault topped the world's wealthiest list with a net worth of $185.4 billion, while Musk trailed him with $185.3 billion.
According to SABC News, Musk took over the title from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in September 2021.
Russian oligarchs
Russia's wealthiest people lost a total of US$46.6 billion on February 24, the day when Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
With sanctions by the West, Russia's richest people like Roman Abramovich failed to keep a grip on their assets in Europe and America.
The oligarchs lost another US$47 billion over the course of the year.
Yang Huiyan
Chinese-Cypriot businesswoman Yang Huiyan lost the title of Asia’s wealthiest woman in July following China's property crisis.
Huiyan inherited Country Garden Holdings from her father in 2005.
Her wealth declined from US$ 24 billion to US$ 11 billion after China President Xi Jinping curbed real estate prices.
Mark Zuckerberg
By mid-September, Zuckerberg's wealth had plunged by US$71 billion after his Meta experiment turned costly.
Over the course of 2022, the Facebook founder fell 19 ranks on the Bloomberg billionaires index, finishing the year at position 25, his lowest position since 2014.
Meta cut over 11,000 jobs in 2022 in the ongoing restructuring process.
COVID-19 billionaires
The wealthy who minted billions from the COVID-19 pandemic also lost part of their fortunes in 2022.
They include Moderna’s Stephane Bancel), used cars (Carvana’s Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III), online shopping (Coupang’s Bom Kim) and Zoom's Eric Yuan.
The 58 billionaires whose wealth soared during the pandemic saw their wealth decline by approximately 58%.
Changpeng Zhao
Binance chief executive officer Changpeng Zhao lost a whopping US$84 billion in 2022.
The Binance CEO went from boom to bust amid the bitcoin and NFT crash.
"I don’t really care much about money," Zhao said after the crypto market spiralled.
Gautam Adani's rise
In other news, Indian industrialist Gautam Adani briefly became the world's second-richest person on the Forbes real-time billionaire tracker in September, weeks after becoming the first Asian to break into the top three.
The self-made billionaire's net worth surged $4 billion overnight to $154 billion, according to Forbes, ranking him ahead of LVMH's Bernard Arnault and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Adani, 60, made his fortune in ports and commodities trading and now operates India's second-largest conglomerate with interests ranging from coal mining and edible oils to airports and news media.
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