After adding trillions to their collective fortunes over the previous years, and then losing nearly $2 trillion in wealth combined over the last year, the world’s billionaires will be happy to see 2022 put in their rearview mirror.
According to a new Forbes report, the outlet estimates that American billionaires were hit the hardest in 2022, losing $660 billion collectively as tech stock prices plunged due to a mix of rising interest rates, skyrocketing inflation, and a declining economic outlook.
The report noted that hit hardest was Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, as he lost $115 billion over the year according to Forbes’ calculations. Forbes estimated Tesla share prices alone were down almost 70% for the year.
Although Musk lost the title of the richest person in the world last year to Bernard Arnault, CEO of fashion conglomerate LVMH, Musk remains the richest man in America, with a net worth of almost $139 billion as of December 27th, according to Forbes’ estimates.
While the outlet labeled Musk “the biggest loser of 2022,” he was far from the only billionaire to see their fortune take a hit. According to the outlet, the five other billionaires who lost the most were Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (-$80 billion), Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent company) co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (-$78 billion), Google co-founder and board member Larry Page (-$40 billion), Nike chair Phil Knight (-$18.3 billion), and the chair emeritus of the Estée Lauder Companies Leonard Lauder (-$9.8 billion).
The outlet also calculated that the number of billionaires had fallen as well, from 2,671 to 2,523, per Forbes’ real-time tracker. That included such names as FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Kanye West, and Rivian founder RJ Scaringe, who all dropped from the list of billionaires.