Here is the list of billionaires who have lost the most dollars this year:

Elon Musk

Long at the top of the ranking of the richest people on Earth, Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, gave up the first place in favor of the French luxury magnate Bernard Arnault, boss of LVMH.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr. Musk has lost $140 billion since January, still keeping the tidy sum of $130 billion.

The evaporation of more than half of his fortune is mainly due to the fall of Tesla on Wall Street (-69% in 2022 as of December 28).

The losses of tech billionaires, in billions of dollars, over one year (as of December 29, 2022) © Ayoub SIMOUR / AFP

Previously pampered by investors, the action of the manufacturer of electric vehicles has continued to plunge on the stock market since the takeover at the end of October of Twitter by Mr. Musk for 44 billion dollars.

From the dismissal of more than half of Twitter's workforce to Donald Trump's return to the social network, the stormy entrepreneur's first months at the head of the platform were marred by multiple controversies.

mark zuckerberg

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has redoubled his efforts to promote the metaverse, this virtual world presented as the future of the internet by its promoters.

Investors are currently far from convinced, as evidenced by the collapse of the action of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which has dropped 65.5% since the start of the year. .

Mr. Zuckerberg's fortune shrunk from $81 billion to $44.4 billion.

Highly dependent on advertising revenue, Meta also suffered in this sector, in a context of global inflation and increased competition.

Jeff Bezos

Since stepping down as CEO of Amazon in July 2021, Jeff Bezos has devoted much of his time to space exploration through his company Blue Origin.

His wealth, however, remains strongly tied to the e-commerce giant's share value, which has fallen more than 51% in 2022.

Mr. Bezos, who serves as executive director of Amazon's board, has lost more than $86 billion this year.

His fortune is estimated at $106 billion.

The 58-year-old entrepreneur, owner of the American daily The Washington Post, told CNN in November that he intended to donate most of his wealth to charity during his lifetime.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

The two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are no longer at the helm of the company since they abandoned their leading functions in 2019 within the parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube or the electronic messaging service. Gmail.

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Page and Brin, however, remain on Alphabet's board of directors, of which they are the largest individual shareholders.

The 40.5% decline since January in Alphabet's stock, which has suffered from falling ad revenue and faces rivals like TikTok in the entertainment segment, has hit the two men's fortunes.

Mr. Page's was down $46.1 billion and Mr. Brin's was down $44.8 billion.

With 82.3 and 78.8 billion dollars respectively, they are however the 10th and 11th richest people on the planet.

Zhang Yiming

The Chinese billionaire Zhang Yiming is an exception in this technological debacle.

The fortune of the owner of ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, increased by $10.4 billion in 2022 to reach $55 billion, making him the 23rd richest person in the world.

But TikTok is in the crosshairs of US authorities, who are concerned about possible links between the popular video-sharing application and Beijing.

The Biden administration has approved banning TikTok from federal employee phones and could force ByteDance to sell the US version of the app.

© 2022 AFP