Original title: the price of divorce for the world's richest man: his personal wealth has shrunk by $46 billion, but his ex-wife has become the top 15 richest people in the United States
On October 3 local time, Forbes released the 2019 US 400 rich list on its official website. Jeff & middot, founder and CEO of Amazon; Bezos won the championship again (naturally the richest man in the world), but his wealth fell to $114 billion from $160 billion a year ago, a decrease of $46 billion.
Let Jeff & middot; An important reason for Bezos's sharp decline in wealth is divorce. In January this year, Jeff announced that he was with his wife Mackenzie & middot; Bezos divorced. The above list shows that Jeff & middot; Bezos's divorce is expensive, because McKenzie, who is on the list for the first time, has reached $36.1 billion, ranking 15 among the top rich in the United States!
The 'stingy' richest man in the United States
The list of 400 people on the 2019 us rich list released on Forbes's official website shows that the total wealth of the us rich on the list reached US $2.96 trillion, a record high, an increase of 2.2% over the total value of last year's list. The threshold for listing was the same as last year, at US $2.1 billion. The average wealth of the rich on the list reached US $7.4 billion, an increase of US $200 million over last year.
The list shows that after last year, Bezos won the title of the richest man in the United States again, with a net worth of $114 billion. Bill & middot, founder of Microsoft; Gates and Warren & middot; Buffett ranked second and third with $106 billion and $80.8 billion respectively.
Many of the richest Americans on the list are also famous: Facebook founder Mark & middot; Zuckerberg ($69.6 billion), Larry & middot, founder of Oracle, a database software company; Ellison ($65 billion), Google co-founder Larry & middot; Page ($55.5 billion) and Sergei & middot; Brin ($53.5 billion).
If you count Bezos's wealth, in addition to Amazon's rising share price, there must be a reason why Bezos can press the top American rich.
A report in the British Daily Mail in January this year pointed out that Jeff & middot; Bezos donated only 0.0906% of his wealth to charity. It is reported that Jeff & middot; Bezos spent only $145 million on charity. This figure is much lower than Bill & middot; Gates and Warren & middot; Buffett, the two donated 37% and 36% of their wealth to support charity.
Zuckerberg has donated US $1.72 billion, the current donation ratio is 2.4%, and Ellison has donated US $1.2 billion, the donation ratio is 2.1%. Zuckerberg announced that he would donate 99% of his fortune in the future.
In addition to being not enthusiastic about charity, Bezos also seems' stingy 'to his employees.
Tencent technology quoted a previous report in the new york times as saying that compared with the free lunch provided to employees by big technology companies such as Google and Facebook, Amazon does not provide free lunch to employees. At lunch time, employees have to queue up to order, and then go to the cashier to pay.
This is not over. Employees working in Amazon can't even enjoy the most basic 'benefits' that many companies can provide - free parking. On average, a moonlight work parking fee will cost more than $200.
Even Amazon senior vice president level executives travel, the company only bears the cost of economy class.
In sharp contrast, Amazon is surprisingly good at the dogs of users and employees: the first customer to buy books on Amazon's website, his name was fortunately used to name an Amazon office building, and a dog named rufus of an old employee also won this honor. For employees, Bezos uses the two main buildings named after his famous' day one 'theory to remind them that this is the first day, and you haven't done enough.
In addition, Bezos has always emphasized the 'door desk' culture, which originated from Bezos's fine tradition of hard work when he removed the door panel as a table in the garage in the early years.
It is worth mentioning that Bezos will directly add '?' at the beginning of this letter when receiving the user's complaint email about some problems, Then forward it to the person in charge of the specific department. The employees who receive such an email are naturally 'under great pressure', and there are many cases of fixing problems day and night.
As of October 3 local time in the United States, Amazon's share price under Bezos was reported to be 1742 US dollars / share, with a total market value of 852.9 billion US dollars, ranking third among the constituent stocks of the S & P 500 stock index, second only to Microsoft and apple; Investors give a P / E ratio of 84 times, which is much higher than Microsoft (62 times) and apple (16 times), suggesting that they are more optimistic about the future development speed of Amazon.
Mackenzie was on the list for the first time
Every editor noticed that Jeff & middot; Bezos's ex-wife Mackenzie made the Forbes list for the first time and ranked 15th with $36.1 billion.
April 4, local time, Jeff & middot; Bezos and his wife McKinsey said on social media that their 25 year marriage had officially ended and the details of divorce related matters had been finalized. According to the law of Washington state in the United States, because the two people did not sign a divorce agreement before marriage and Amazon created it jointly, the property should be divided equally (the two previously held 16% of Amazon's shares).
Surprisingly, McKenzie voluntarily gave up all the equity (worth $4 billion) of the Washington Post and blue origin, a space exploration company, and retained only a quarter of the equity of Amazon jointly held by the two, and granted Bezos the voting rights of all the equity. This means that McKenzie voluntarily gave up $30 billion worth of wealth. The generosity of his ex-wife also helped Bezos keep his position as the world's richest man.
On May 28 this year, with Jeff & middot; Less than two months after Bezos's formal divorce, McKenzie said she wanted to be a more generous philanthropist than her former husband.
Mackenzie said he had signed a 'donation pledge' and promised to donate half of his assets (about $18 billion in the latest list) to charities in his lifetime or after his death.
McKenzie said in a statement at that time,
'each of us has many resources to share with others - time, focus, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor and emotion & hellip& hellip; In addition to the wealth that life brings me, I also have a disproportionate amount of money and wealth to share. I will continue to think about how to do charity. It takes time, energy and investment, but I don't want to wait. I will continue (to invest in charity) until my wealth runs out. "
In contrast, Bezos, the world's richest man, did not join the pledge. He publicly praised his ex-wife's generosity on twitter. " I'm proud of Mackenzie. She writes so beautifully. " However, it is worth noting that Bezos only followed Mackenzie on twitter, while Mackenzie did not follow his ex husband. Mackenzie did not respond to Bezos's public praise.