The Coronavirus pandemic had ravage the world economy forcing numerous businesses to close down and millions of jobs were lost but there are still some people who keep growing their billions even during the pandemic – we have the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk taking an almost 10% increase in their wealth despite the pandemic according to a new report published by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
With as huge as 22 million Americans filing for unemployment, the wealth of these American business tycoons surged despite the stiffened economy.
The economy on the long run is even threatened with recession but not only Bezos and Musk increased their fortunes but also Zoom, the video platform also saw a huge rise because of the need for people to communicate despite the inevitable social distancing measures to further reduce the spread of the disease. With that, people having large holdings in these companies have been able to boost their net worth.
“This is the tale of two pandemics, with very unequal sacrifice,” said Chuck Collins, a co-author of the report.
During the period between January 1 to April 10 this year, 34 of the nation’s wealthiest billionaires have seen their net worth increase by tens of millions of dollars, the report said.
According to the IPS, eight of these billionaires includes Bezos, Zoom founder, Eric Yuan and Musk saw a US$1 billion jump in their total net worth. Elon Musk on his own has about 18.5% stake in Tesla shares which soared over 73% since the beginning of the year as traders looked beyond short-term impact of the pandemic.
Bezos on the other hand owns about 15.1% inAmazon stock which gained about 31% this year as online orders surged due to people’s inability to physically shop for goods.
In the last decade, wealth of U.S. billionaires jumped over 80.6% adjusted for inflation, the report added.
