Elon Musk leaves behind Amazon's Bezos to become world's richest person: Bloomberg News

Tesla Inc chief and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk surpassed Amazon.com Inc's top boss Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

Including Thursday's gains in Tesla shares, Musk, 49, had a net worth of more than $188.5 billion, $1.5 billion more than Bezos, the report said.

Musk's personal wealth has been boosted by last year's more than eight-fold surge in the shares of Tesla, which became the world's most valuable carmaker.

He has a 20 percent stake in the carmaker and about $42 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options, according to the Bloomberg report.

Tesla shares were up as much as 7.4 percent on Thursday at a record high of $811.61.

The Forbes Billionaires List, however, said Musk still trails Amazon's Bezos by $7.8 billion.

Forbes has a more conservative estimate based on the Tesla stake that he has pledged as a collateral for personal loans. To take that into account, it applies a 25 percent discount to his shareholding, according to its report in November.

Musk, who co-founded and sold Internet payments company PayPal Holdings Inc, now leads some of the most futuristic companies in the world.

Besides Tesla, he heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.

He set up the Boring Company to make affordable tunnels below busy city streets for an all-electric public transportation system to avoid the nasty traffic jams in US cities.

-reuters-

Amazon's Jeff Bezos becomes world's richest person - briefly

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday became the world's richest person, as a jump in the share price of the US tech giant enabled him to overtake Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a new estimate showed.

Forbes magazine said its real-time tracking of personal fortunes showed Bezos with a net worth of $90.5 billion, ahead of the $90 billion for Gates early Thursday.


A few hours later, though, Bezos had slipped back to second place as Amazon shares pared their gains.

Bezos owns around 17 percent of the equity of Amazon, which has been expanding from its original mission as an online retailer to a diversified tech firm in cloud computing, online video, computer hardware and artificial intelligence.

The company also recently announced plans to acquire US grocer Whole Foods, which could help Amazon expand in that sector.

Amazon shares were up 1.7 percent at $1,070.72 and have risen some 24 percent over the past four months, adding some $17 billion to the net worth of the 53-year-old Bezos.

According to Forbes, Gates has been the richest person in the magazine's annual rankings in March for the past four years and for 18 of the past 22 years. Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim overtook Gates from 2010 to 2013.

Among the billionaires gaining ground is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has an estimated worth of some $71.3 billion according to the real-time Forbes estimate.

- Bezos v Trump -

While most of Bezos's wealth is in Amazon, he also owns the private space firm Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.

Forbes pointed out that Gates could have been considerably wealthier, having given away more than $30 billion to philanthropic causes over the years.

Bezos has given an estimated $100 million, but recently asked users on Twitter for ideas for charitable donations which could have an impact on the world.

The billionaire notably opposed Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, but after the election appeared to give the new president a boost by announcing Amazon would add 100,000 new US jobs over 18 months.

Trump however has not spared Bezos's ventures from criticism, apparently renewing claims that he purchased the newspaper to divert attention from regulators away from Amazon.

"So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News," Trump tweeted this week.

"Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?"

Bezos appeared intent on spending more time in the US capital, purchasing what is likely the city's largest private residence for $23 million.

Under Bezos's ownership, the Washington Post reported it was profitable in 2016, after making a series of investments in new technology and personnel.

With Amazon, Bezos is known for taking a long view. The company lost money for many years and still delivers thinner profits than many of its peers, plowing money into new investments.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

This billionaire wants you to have a 3-day work week

MANILA, Philippines - A three-day work week is something Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim believes all employees should have.

Slim, one of the world's richest men, suggested the idea at a business conference in Paraguay.

The downside is, workers would have to put up with longer work hours, up to 11 hours a day and a later retirement age of 70 or 75.

"People are going to have to work for more years, until they are 70 or 75, and just work three days a week – perhaps 11 hours a day," he was quoted by Paraguay.com news agency as saying.

Still Slim believes having four days off would boost productivity and improve the general quality of life.

"With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life. Having four days (off) would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied," he added.

Here in the Philippines, a similar proposal was floated by the MMDA in February to ease the traffic situation in Metro Manila. But the four-day work week idea was criticized by labor groups. - ANC

ANC News Now, July 23, 2014

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

What are the daily habits of billionaires?

MANILA, Philippines – The world’s richest and most successful people also get 24 hours a day, but what do they do in those hours that define their success?

ANC’s financial advisor Salve Duplito said the world’s richest man, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, uses most of his hours reading the Wall St. Journal, New York Times and the Economist.

The 58-year-old Gates also reads at least 100 emails per day.

His net worth is estimated at $76 billion, according to Forbes.

Carlos Slim, the second richest man in the world, wakes up early every day to drive himself to work.

The Mexican business magnate also personally makes daily phone calls to his associates.

His net worth is valued at $72 billion.

Zara’s Amancio Ortega, meanwhile, goes to the same coffee shop everyday, wears simple clothes, and eats lunch with his employees in the company canteen.

Like Slim, American billionaire Warren Buffett also drives himself to work everyday, and at 83 years old, he still arrives at his desk like clockwork at 8:30 a.m.

Duplito, citing Thomas Corley’s book Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, said although the wealthy come from widely different backgrounds, studies show that they have common habits that separate them from those living in poverty.

Among these habits are waking up early, reading, and writing down goals.

According to Corley’s study, 44% of the wealthy wakes up 3 hours before work while only 3% of the poor do so.

Reading is also a habit of the wealthy with 86% of them reading reams of information on a daily basis compared to only 26% of the poor.

Most wealthy and successful individuals spend their reading time of at least 30 minutes or more each day for education and career.

Wealthy people are also more goal-oriented, studies show, with 81% of them maintaining a to-do list compared to only 19% of the poor.

Eighty percent of the wealthy and successful are also focused on achieving a single goal compared to 12% of the poor.

Corley’s study also showed that most wealthy people avoid watching reality TV compared to 78% of the poor that do.

Duplito noted that this is an indication that “the huge divide between the haves and the have-nots is not money, but the mindset.”

“Mindset is also the one thing that can help a poor person get out of poverty. If a person knows how not to live poor even when he doesn’t have cash, eventually success and wealth will be well within his reach,” she added.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bill Gates hopeful of more aid from China

CANBERRA - The world's richest man Bill Gates Tuesday urged China to become a bigger player in foreign development following its success in lifting millions of its own people out of poverty.

Speaking in Australia, where the Microsoft co-founder met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Gates said the Asian powerhouse was already giving foreign aid but there were "very little facts and figures" on how much.

"I am hopeful that Chinese aid, both in terms of the quality of the aid and the quantity of the aid, will continue to increase," he told a lunch address in Canberra.

"I think that there is a real opportunity there. What they've done to date, as far as anything that is visible, is quite modest."

Gates, who recently overtook Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim as the world's richest man with an estimated wealth of US$69.8 billion, said his work towards the eradication of polio was a personal priority.

Australia, which committed Aus$50 million (US$48 million) to fight polio in 2011, Tuesday pledged another Aus$80 million over four years from 2015 to wipe out the crippling disease which remains endemic in only three countries -- Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is contributing US$1.8 billion to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, one-third of the polio endgame strategic plan 2013-2018.

Earlier, Gates said he was disappointed that Australia had slowed the growth of its foreign aid budget but praised it as a global leader in development.

His visit comes weeks after Gillard's administration pushed back its goal of increasing aid spending to 0.5 percent of gross national income by another year to 2017/18 after a drastic hit to tax revenues.

"The sooner Australia can get up to the 0.5 percent, which is the stated goal, the more kids will be saved and the more this region will be stable," Gates told national broadcaster ABC.

"So when that got slowed down I was a little disappointed, but it has been increasing and people should feel good about that."

Gates said there were fewer than 300 cases of polio around the world in 2012, but acknowledged that it would be difficult to remove the disease from the countries where it remained.

"These are violent places. There are often rumours against the vaccines. We are going to have to do our best work, we are going to have to be innovative," Gates said.

Attacks against polio workers have resulted in some 20 deaths in Pakistan since December after a Taliban faction last year banned polio vaccinations in the tribal region of Waziristan, alleging the innoculation programme was a cover for espionage.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com