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THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST
Though the Federal Reserve delivered a grim economic outlook on Wednesday—triggering a domestic stock plunge—a group of 10 billionaires bucked the trend. These entrepreneurs added nearly $23 billion to their fortunes in the week ending Thursday, June 11, as hot technology stocks continued to skyrocket amid all-time highs.
The week’s biggest gainer in percentage terms exemplifies what appeared to be irrational exuberance with a recently minted multibillionaire. Nikola Corp. founder and chairman Trevor Milton’s fortune jumped to $6.6 billion on Thursday, up from $3.7 billion a week ago, after a booming post-IPO market for his Phoenix-based hybrid truck company. Nikola has plenty of orders for its trucks, which it says it will start delivering next year.
Named after the same inventor as Tesla, Nikola debuted on the Nasdaq last Wednesday with a $12 billion market capitalization—roughly four times the size of its last private valuation—but the investor furor didn’t end there. Shares surged almost 80% in the week through Thursday, and at one point, the firm–which has $10 billion in booked orders but forecasts no revenue for 2020–was worth more than legacy carmaker Ford, which boasts a $25 billion market cap on annual revenues of almost $156 billion. A bit of the dust has settled in recent days, but as of Friday’s market close, six-year-old Nikola is trading at a $23 billion valuation. Its 38-year-old founder, who grew up in Utah and dropped out of college after just one semester, owns about 40% of the company. The Nikola fervor also minted a second billionaire, the firm’s CEO, Mark Russell.
Amazon and Tesla both hit new all-time highs during the week. Jeff Bezos‘ fortune is up $5.4 billion, and ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos is also among the week’s biggest gainers; her fortune’s up $1.9 billion. Elon Musk, meanwhile, nabbed the week’s second-largest gain in dollar terms, after Tesla surged 9% to an all-time high on Wednesday following reports of an internal memo in which Musk told employees it was “time to go all out” and bring the firms’ semi commercial truck to volume production, though he didn’t specify a time frame for doing so. In the week through Thursday, Musk’s fortune rose $3.4 billion to $41.5 billion.
The CEO of one of the world’s largest makers of the batteries powering these electric cars is also among the week’s biggest gainers. Robin Zeng founded China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) in 2011, and this week his fortune is up $1.2 billion. On Thursday CATL, a supplier for Toyota, Volkswagen and Tesla, announced the launch of an electric vehicle battery designed to last up to 16 years, sending shares soaring 5%. Zeng ended the day with a $13.4 billion net worth.
The remaining top 10 gainers are based in Asia, namely China and South Korea, where markets weathered the Thursday crash. All of them draw their fortunes from industries booming during the coronavirus pandemic. Colin Zheng Huang, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo and China’s third-richest person, is worth $2.7 billion more in the past week. His fortune has nearly doubled during the pandemic.
Outside e-commerce, biopharmaceutical firms also boosted billionaire fortunes. Seo Jung-Jin, the founder of South Korea-based Celltrion Group, is $1.6 billion richer this week after the firm’s distribution unit announced on Wednesday that its immunosuppressive drug Remsima would be tested in United Kingdom hospitals to see whether it can stop inflammation in severe cases of Covid-19 and improve recovery time. Shares have rallied more than 13% since, and Jung-Jin, the week’s sixth-biggest gainer, is now worth $11.4 billion.