Jeff Bezos, chief executive of giant online shopping behemoth Amazon, became the world’s second richest person on Wednesday – at least on paper.
His estimated net worth has jumped $10.2 billion so far in 2017, with Bloomberg's Billionaires Index putting his total fortune at $75.6bn (€70.41).
It was the third biggest Bloomberg index rise of the year, after Chinese package delivery businessman Wang Wei's $18.4bn gain and an $11.4bn bump for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (pictured).
Helping Bezos displace Warren Buffett, previously runner-up to Bill Gates on the rich list, and third-placed Zara billionaire Amancio Ortega, was Amazon's Tuesday announcement that it plans to purchase the Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com.
The news caused shares in the company to skyrocket $18.32 yesterday. The extremely strong one-day performance added a cool $1.5bn to the 53-year-old ecommerce tycoon's wealth.
Bezos now has $700m more than Berkshire Hathaway's Buffett, and $1.3bn more than Ortega. The latter owns the Inditex, the world's biggest fashion group, and remains Europe's richest person.
He is still some $10.4bn off Bill Gates, who is worth an estimated $86bn.
Bezos is one tech leader who has benefited from the election of US President Donald Trump, adding $7bn to his net worth since the global equities rally following Trump's election alone.
Revealed last week, Forbes' annual Rich List saw the Collison brothers joining the billionaires club for the first time.
The Limerick-born pair are behind the global online payments firm Stripe and landed in joint 1,795th place out of 2,043 billionaires with an estimated fortune of $1.1bn (€1.02bn) each.
The 26-year-old John, who is two years behind his brother Patrick, is the youngest self-made billionaire on the list.
