A file photo of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, added $6.4 billion to his fortune on Tuesday, on the back of overall gains registered in the market, with S&P Index climbing by more than two per cent, multiple news outlets have reported. Bezos' company Amazon's stocks witnessed a rise of 5.3 per cent, with a share trading for $2,283. The overall wealth of Bezos now stands at $138.5 billion.
Russian news agency Sputnik reported that Bezos is not the only member to feature in the Forbes' list of world's richest people to have added to his personal wealth during the unfolding coronavirus pandemic. The Walmart Family and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have also added a good deal of wealth to their kitty this year.
Sputnik also highlighted that even as the world's richest 500 people have lost $553 billion due to the economic slowdown caused by the outbreak, as per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, their combined worth has risen by 20 per cent from March 23.
Businesses and supply chains have been disrupted as governments across the world have announced countrywide lockdowns in an effort to tackle the spread of the virus.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday that the global growth will be the hardest hit this year, the worst slump since the Great Depression and "far worse" than the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09. "Under the assumption that the pandemic and required containment peaks in the second quarter for most countries in the world, and recedes in the second half of this year, in the April World Economic Outlook we project global growth in 2020 to fall to -3 percent. This is a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January 2020, a major revision over a very short period," the IMF said in its blog.
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