In just 1 week, SARS-CoV-2 'swept away' 500 billion of the world's richest people
In just one week, the total assets of the world's 500 richest people have decreased by 444 billion USD due to the spread of Covid-19, negatively affecting the stock market, as Bloomberg reported citing its own sources.
| Bill Gates is one of the richest people to suffer losses due to SARS-CoV-2. Photo: AP |
The world's three richest people suffered big losses: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault, chairman of the LVMH group. Their combined fortunes fell by about $30 billion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the 25th richest person on the planet, also suffered big losses. Musk lost $9 billion in a week as his company's stock price plummeted. It was also a pretty bleak week for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who lost more than $6.5 billion.
On Thursday, European and US stock exchanges fell into another wave of panic surrounding the spread of the new coronavirus: European indices lost more than 4%, while US indices lost more than 3%. On Friday, the decline continued: leading US stock indexes closed in the red by 0.9-3%, the financial-accounting system curbed the decline with a statement of readiness to support the US economy if necessary.
