While
many of us are concerned about how we’re going to afford next
month’s rent, Facebook founder
and CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have such worries
(probably never had). He is now the sixth richest person in the world,
according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. His net worth reportedly soared
overnight, bringing him to a perfectly acceptable $47 billion.
The
Facebook CEO is now worth an estimated $47.5 bn after his fortune rose $6 bn in
trading on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. This is $1.5 bn higher than the
estimated net wealth of the Koch brothers.
Bloomberg’s data suggests that Zuckerberg has even surpassed the likes of
Charles and David Koch, two billionaire moneybags notorious for their
contributions to the Republican political party. Zuckerberg now more closely
trails other tech entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, though he
still has a long ways to go if he expects to exceed Gates’ net worth of $78 billion.
This news
coincides with Facebook’s 10-percent stock surge,
which resulted in sales of $5.8 billion for the quarter and $18 billion for the
2015 fiscal year in general. This hugely exceeded Wall Street’s estimates, mainly because it wasn’t expected that mobile advertisements would prove so lucrative for
the social media proprietor. In fact, S&P Capital IQ analysts only
predicted revenue of $5.37 billion for its Q4 2015 earnings.
This news
comes a little less than two months after Zuckerberg and his wife, after giving
birth to their baby daughter, revealed their plans to give 99 percent of
Facebook’s shares to a charity with
the goal of “advancing human potential
and promoting equality.” At the time, the shares
were priced at a still-grandiose $45 billion.
The top
six are:
1: Bill
Gates $78.0 bn
2:
Amancio Ortega $69.7 bn
3: Warren
Buffett $59.4 bn
4: Jeff
Bezos $55.8 bn
5: Carlos
Slim $48.6 bn
6: Mark
Zuckerberg $47.5 bn