Executives at some of the best-known internet names — Amazon and Ebay — have shot up the rankings of the super rich, according to an annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans published today.
In what has become an institution, Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of mega-rich Americans shows internet stocks have made a comeback. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, the internet retailer, added more than $3-billion to his net worth with a tripling of Amazon’s share price.
David Filo and Jerry Yang of search engine Yahoo! nearly tripled their wealth, while the fortunes of Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman rose almost 50%. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer moved up 44 places in the rankings to 78th.
But Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, sits on top of the pile for the 10th year running with a fortune of $46-billion, up $3-billion on last year, which makes this latter-day Croesus worth more than the entire gross domestic product of Guatemala ($43,5-billion) and Ethiopia ($43-billion).
In second place lies Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful investors and a golfing friend of Gates. He is worth $36-billion, unchanged from last year. In a distant third place is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, his net worth rising $1-billion to $22-billion.
This year’s list — now in its 21st year — showed the fortunes of America’s super rich growing after two years of declines. The total net worth of the top 400 rose 10% to $955-billion this year from 2002.
Forbes said the surge in collective net worth was largely due to gains in internet stocks and hi-tech fortunes. The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the east to the hi-tech west. When the list was first published in 1982, there were 81 members from New York and 56 from California. Today, California boasts 95 Forbes 400 members, while New York has 47. – Guardian Unlimited Â