He trails behind the world’s richest particular person, one other fully-fledged superstar, Tesla founder and Mars fanatic Elon Musk. He’s at the moment sitting atop a $312 billion mountain of dough and generates extra headlines than Kim Kardashian.
Aside from their unimaginable wealth and personal assortment of rockets, Musk has one thing else in widespread with Bezos: a picture drawback. Even his personal father lately revealed he was not happy with his well-known son.
When pictures of Musk shirtless on holidays taking a dip hit social media lately, the lots reacted in a marketing campaign of vitriol and trolling that was far uglier than something the billionaire was really exposing in his bathers.
This 12 months Forbes had 2668 billionaires listed on its thirty sixth annual rating of the planet’s richest folks, value a collective $18.09 trillion— roughly $570 billion lower than in 2021, largely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic.
America nonetheless leads the world, with 735 billionaires.
Recognition contest: Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg.Credit score:Bloomberg
Final month, a lot of them gathered on the historic Solar Valley Lodge in Idaho for an annual convention, dubbed “summer season camp for billionaires”.
In accordance with Selection, the visitor checklist this 12 months included Microsoft founder Invoice Gates, Warren Buffett, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Apple honcho Tim Prepare dinner and Rupert Murdoch.
The five-day love-in concerned the moguls listening to quite a lot of speeches (together with the headline act: Musk speaking about colonising Mars).
A number of the richies sat in on dialogue panels about politics, healthcare, and the economic system and, when all of it received an excessive amount of, there have been group actions too, from golf to fly-fishing, climbing and biking.
Nevertheless, there was no point out of any periods on learn how to purchase public adulation.
James Packer lately revealed – from the luxurious of his personal $250 million tremendous yacht – he was embarking on a marketing campaign to rehabilitate his public picture following a bruising few years in each his private and enterprise lives.
Picture rehab: Robert De Niro and James Packer aboard the billionaire’s $250 million superyacht final month.Credit score:
Final week he donated $250,000 in direction of serving to Julian Assange, whereas the Packer household has additionally donated numerous hundreds of thousands to charity over many a long time.
Gina Rinehart, one of many greatest sponsors of Australian sport, might be higher identified for the bitter household feud along with her personal youngsters that has lasted a long time.
Philanthropy has additionally been the keystone of the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis, which has given away billions of {dollars} to quite a lot of causes, from educating the impoverished to giving US$2 billion to the worldwide COVID-19 response.
Melinda Gates reportedly negotiated her divorce and break up of the shared $US145 billion ($184.1 billion) fortune for greater than a 12 months earlier than the announcement she was splitting from husband, Invoice. Credit score:Getty
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That wasn’t sufficient to avoid wasting Invoice Gates from the scorching fallout of his marriage break-up when it was disclosed he had been dishonest on his now ex-wife, which he later acknowledged brought about “a number of ache”.
Gates’ public picture has suffered ever since. Because the Beatles famously sang: “For cash can’t purchase me love”.