World’s Billionaires Lose $200 Billion In A Day

Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Masayoshi Son are just a few of the hundreds of billionaires whose fortunes sank along with global markets on Monday.

If there are ever bad days to be a billionaire, Monday was definitely one. A global market selloff started on the other side of the world and wiped out a total of $201.9 billion from the combined net worths of the world’s 2,713 billionaires in under 24 hours, according to Forbes’ real-time net worth tracker.

Asia led the contagion with Japan’s Nikkei index dropping a staggering 12% Monday, its worst trading day since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987, due in part to higher interest rates and a strengthening yen against the U.S. dollar. Japan’s famed tech investor Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Tokyo-based SoftBank Group, lost $4.6 billion, or nearly 16%, making him the second biggest loser in the world in percentage terms. Son’s SoftBank shares nosedived nearly 19% on Monday and more than 30% since hitting a record high in July. (The biggest loser in percentage terms was Germany’s Ralph Dommermuth, CEO of internet access provider United Internet, whose fortune fell nearly 17%, a nearly $400 million decline.) The founder of fast fashion brand Uniqlo, Tadashi Yanai, was another high profile Japanese tycoon hit by the economic winds, losing $3.3 billion in a day.

In dollar terms, India’s Gautam Adani – the chairman of a sprawling conglomerate with interests in ports, airports, power generation and green energy among others – and Indonesia’s Prajogo Pangestu, whose main interests are in petrochemicals and renewable energy, were down even more than their Japanese counterparts, slipping $4.8 billion apiece.

The biggest losers of all were U.S. tech billionaires, whose fortunes sank along with major U.S. indexes. The tech-centric Nasdaq plunged 3.43%, falling further in the 10% correction territory it first entered Friday, while the S&P 500 dropped 3%, after a weak jobs report on Friday that revealed higher unemployment and lower than anticipated new job creation. Weaker earnings reports in recent days didn’t help investor confidence. Bitcoin also fell 10% and fintech stocks took a hit. Altogether, American billionaires tumbled $84 billion.

Amazon chairman and cofounder Jeff Bezos lost more in dollar terms than anyone on the planet as his fortune slid to $180.7 billion on Monday from $187.1 billion on Friday. The $6.4 billion single-day hit followed a $15 billion, or 7%, dive on Friday. Behind the selloff: second quarter revenue (announced after market close on Thursday) that missed expectations and weak projections tied to higher AI spending. Larry Ellison, the chairman and cofounder of tech giant Oracle, had the second biggest single-day loss, down $6.2 billion on Monday. Oracle shares – which account for the vast majority of Ellison’s fortune – fell 4% on Monday amid the selloff. Altogether billionaires behind the maybe not-so “Magnificent 7” stocks (Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Tesla) ranked as eight of the 10 biggest American losers of the day – with a collective $38.5 billion loss.

In fact, the only gainer out of Forbes’ top 20 richest people was L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers. At least she had a happy Monday.