Billionaires list: Dangote, Adenuga gain, Bezos overtakes Bill Gates

The President, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, saw his net worth increase by $162m to $16.2bn on Thursday, as the Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, briefly overtook Microsoft’s Bill Gates to claim the title of the world’s richest person.

According to a real-time billionaires’ index compiled by Forbes, the net worth of the Chairman of Globacom, Dr. Mike Adenuga, rose by $7m to $6.2bn.

The net worth of the Founder and Executive Chairman, Famfa Oil Limited, Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija, was unchanged at $1.6bn.

Bezos leapfrogged Gates, who has been the richest man on the planet since 2013, after a rise in the share price of Amazon ahead of its latest results due later on Thursday.

According to the Forbes’ index, the rise pushed the value of Bezos’s fortune to $91bn, compared with Gates’ wealth of $90bn.

But as Amazon shares fell back, Gates regained the top spot.

Their riches are calculated on the share prices of their respective companies and at the current values, Bezos’s stake is twice as big as the carmaker Ford.

Amazon shares have soared this year, making the company worth more than $500bn and boosting Bezos’s wealth, as he owns 17 per cent of the company, according to The Guardian.

He also has a number of other investments, including in Google, Uber, Twitter and airbnb, worth more than $5bn.

At the start of 2017, Bezos was ranked the fourth richest in the world, behind Gates, the investor Warren Buffett and Amancio Ortega, who founded Inditex, the company behind retailer Zara.