It’s been a tumultuous 2022 for the wealthiest people on the planet, with the top 10 richest on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ending the year with heavy losses totalling a combined $359.15 billion, dragged down by global economic uncertainty.
Globally, the world’s billionaires lost nearly $2 trillion combined in 2022, according to Forbes magazine.
Economic uncertainty — compounded by the Russia-Ukraine war, high inflation and rising interest rates — has increased volatility in global financial markets, which fell into bear territory earlier this year after a 13-year bull run.
The biggest individual loser was Tesla co-founder and new Twitter owner Elon Musk, who shed a whopping $138 billion from his net worth in 2022 — almost equivalent to the gross domestic product of Hungary — and lost his title as the world’s richest person for the first time in 14 months.
Now ranked the world’s second-wealthiest person, Mr Musk, 51, lost the top spot to Bernard Arnault, chairman of French luxury group LVMH, on December 12.
Watch: Who is Bernard Arnault, the man who replaced Elon Musk as the world’s richest person?
Mr Arnault has a net worth of $162 billion despite losing $16.4 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Mr Musk is now worth $132 billion, down from $273.5 billion a year ago and a far cry from the peak of his wealth, which hit a high of $320 billion in November 2021, Forbes reported.
The majority of Mr Musk’s fortune is tied to Tesla stock, which has lost more than half of its value since January 3, when it was trading at $399.93.
On Wednesday, Tesla shares were worth $109.10, down 69 per cent year to date, as shareholder concerns deepened over Mr Musk’s distraction with Twitter, which he bought in October for $44 billion, and a fall in demand for electric vehicles.
Perhaps the brightest spot in the top 10 world’s richest list was the rapid rise in personal wealth for India’s self-made billionaire Gautam Adani, who added $42.2 billion to his net worth in 2022.
Mr Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, started climbing the ranks of the world’s richest in April this year, when shares in his listed companies skyrocketed.
He is now the world’s third-richest person, with a net worth of $119 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Over the past two decades, the Adani Group has diversified into ports, power generation and distribution, airports, data centres and digital services.
“Today, he is one of the 100 most influential businessmen worldwide, both in the shipping trade and infrastructure industry,” said Celebrity Net Worth, which tracks the wealth and finances of the rich and famous.
In February, Mr Adani was crowned the wealthiest person in Asia, with a net worth of $88.5 billion, and ranked as the 10th-richest person in the world at the time, Bloomberg reported.
Mr Adani, a first-generation entrepreneur who started out as a diamond trader in Mumbai in the 1980s, helped run his brother’s plastics business in his home state of Gujarat before setting up Adani Enterprises — the group’s flagship company — as an agri-commodities trader in 1988.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates — who held the world’s richest title from 1995 to 2017, according to Forbes — is ranked the fourth-richest person with a net worth of $109 billion.
So far this year, Mr Gates has shed $28.6 billion from his personal fortune but last week said that he expected to drop out of the world’s richest list at some time in the near future.
“I turned 67 in October. It's hard to believe I'm that old — in America, most people my age are retired!” Mr Gates said in his end-of-year blog post on December 20.
“But I won’t be slowing down anytime soon. I’m still going full speed on the project I began more than two decades ago, which is to give the vast majority of my resources back to society.
“Although I don’t care where I rank on the list of the world’s richest people, I do know that as I succeed in giving, I will drop down and eventually off the list altogether.”
In July, Mr Gates said he would give most of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he set up with his ex-wife in 2000.
He also said the foundation would increase its annual endowment payout to $9 billion annually by 2026, up from $6 billion currently.
“To help make this spending increase possible, I am transferring $20 billion to the foundation’s endowment this month,” Mr Gates said at the time. This explains the majority of the decrease in his net worth.
Bill Gates at NYU in Abu Dhabi — in pictures
Meanwhile, renowned investor Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, ended 2022 as the world’s fifth-richest person with a net worth of $106 billion, despite giving more than $4 billion to charity this year.
Like Mr Gates, Mr Buffett, 92, has also pledged to give away the majority of his fortune and was a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation until 2021, when he stepped down from the role.
Since 2006, Mr Buffett has contributed more than $36 billion of his personal fortune to the foundation. In June this year, Mr Buffett gave the foundation $3.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway B shares.
The past year has also been difficult for Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who started 2022 as the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $194.2 billion.
However, Mr Bezos, who was ranked the world’s richest person in 2017 but lost the crown to Mr Musk in September 2021, has dropped back to sixth place after losing $87.6 billion, or 45.5 per cent, of his personal fortune this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His current net worth is $105 billion, driven down by the value of Amazon stock, which has fallen from $170.40 on January 3 to trade at $83.05 on Wednesday, a drop of 51.27 per cent year to date.
Amazon’s decreased stock value comes amid a slowdown in sales for the world’s biggest e-commerce retailer as high global inflation continues to weigh on consumers.
Watch: Jeff Bezos thanks Amazon staff and customers after trip to space
Larry Ellison, co-founder of computer technology company Oracle, who dropped out of the exclusive $100 billion club earlier this year, is now ranked the world’s seventh-richest person, with a net worth of $90.1 billion.
His fortune is down from $108.1 billion a year ago, when he was the world’s 10th-richest person.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani has edged up one place to become the world's eighth-richest person with a fortune of $86.9 billion. So far this year, he has lost $3.1 billion from his net worth, according to Bloomberg data.
Steve Ballmer, former chief executive of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, has also fallen out of the centibillionaires’ club and is now the world’s ninth-wealthiest person, with a fortune of $84.1 billion, down from $120.7 billion a year ago.
Rounding out the top 10 is Google co-founder Larry Page, who has a net worth of $81.2 billion. A year ago, Mr Page was worth $129.5 billion and was the world’s fifth-richest person.
The most notable fall out of the world’s top 10 richest list is Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook.
With a current net worth of $44 billion, Mr Zuckerberg is now the world’s 25th-richest person — down from a high of number three in 2021.
Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021 and since the beginning of the year, its share price has plunged 68 per cent, dragged down by a 52 per cent annual drop in third-quarter net profit, which marked the social media company's second consecutive quarterly revenue decline.
However, he’s not the only billionaire to experience a diminishing personal fortune.
After ending 2021 with a net worth of $6.8 billion, Ye — the rapper formerly known as Kanye West — has seen his fortune plummet to about $400 million this year.
Ye dropped out of the billionaires’ club in October, when a number of business partners, including adidas, ended business deals with the singer after he made anti-Semitic remarks earlier this year.
But 2022’s biggest fall from grace would have to be that of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder and former chief executive of collapsed cryptocurrency trading platform FTX.
Mr Bankman-Fried, 30, lost his $16 billion fortune overnight, in what has been described as the biggest one-day loss on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November.
He was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12 after federal prosecutors in the US charged him with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud, for allegedly misusing billions of dollars in customer funds before the $9 billion collapse of FTX and Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency trading company.
He is currently under house arrest at his parents’ home in California after a US court granted him bail of $250 million.
If convicted, he faces up to 115 years in prison, legal experts said — and it is unlikely he will ever feature on the world's rich lists again.
The world’s top 10 richest people in 2022
1. Bernard Arnault — $162 billion
2. Elon Musk — $132 billion
3. Gautam Adani — $119 billion
4. Bill Gates — $109 billion
5. Warren Buffett — $106 billion
6. Jeff Bezos — $105 billion
7. Larry Ellison — $90.1 billion
8. Mukesh Ambani — $86.9 billion
9. Steve Ballmer — $84.1 billion
10. Larry Page — $81.2 billion
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
A Cat, A Man, and Two Women
Junichiro Tamizaki
Translated by Paul McCarthy
Daunt Books
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The alternatives
• Founded in 2014, Telr is a payment aggregator and gateway with an office in Silicon Oasis. It’s e-commerce entry plan costs Dh349 monthly (plus VAT). QR codes direct customers to an online payment page and merchants can generate payments through messaging apps.
• Business Bay’s Pallapay claims 40,000-plus active merchants who can invoice customers and receive payment by card. Fees range from 1.99 per cent plus Dh1 per transaction depending on payment method and location, such as online or via UAE mobile.
• Tap started in May 2013 in Kuwait, allowing Middle East businesses to bill, accept, receive and make payments online “easier, faster and smoother” via goSell and goCollect. It supports more than 10,000 merchants. Monthly fees range from US$65-100, plus card charges of 2.75-3.75 per cent and Dh1.2 per sale.
• 2checkout’s “all-in-one payment gateway and merchant account” accepts payments in 200-plus markets for 2.4-3.9 per cent, plus a Dh1.2-Dh1.8 currency conversion charge. The US provider processes online shop and mobile transactions and has 17,000-plus active digital commerce users.
• PayPal is probably the best-known online goods payment method - usually used for eBay purchases - but can be used to receive funds, providing everyone’s signed up. Costs from 2.9 per cent plus Dh1.2 per transaction.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Results:
Women:
1. Rhiannan Iffland (AUS) 322.95 points
2. Lysanne Richard (CAN) 285.75
3. Ellie Smart (USA) 277.70
Men:
1. Gary Hunt (GBR) 431.55
2. Constantin Popovici (ROU) 424.65
3. Oleksiy Prygorov (UKR) 392.30
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 261hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 405Nm at 1,750-3,500rpm
Transmission: 9-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 6.9L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh117,059
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
Conservative MPs who have publicly revealed sending letters of no confidence
- Steve Baker
- Peter Bone
- Ben Bradley
- Andrew Bridgen
- Maria Caulfield
- Simon Clarke
- Philip Davies
- Nadine Dorries
- James Duddridge
- Mark Francois
- Chris Green
- Adam Holloway
- Andrea Jenkyns
- Anne-Marie Morris
- Sheryll Murray
- Jacob Rees-Mogg
- Laurence Robertson
- Lee Rowley
- Henry Smith
- Martin Vickers
- John Whittingdale
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
POSSIBLE ENGLAND EURO 2020 SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Jordan Pickford, Nick Pope, Dean Henderson.
Defenders: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Kieran Trippier, Joe Gomez, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Tyrone Mings, Ben Chilwell, Fabian Delph.
Midfielders: Declan Rice, Harry Winks, Jordan Henderson, Ross Barkley, Mason Mount, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Forwards: Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi.
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 247hp at 6,500rpm
Torque: 370Nm from 1,500-3,500rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 7.8L/100km
Price: from Dh94,900
On sale: now
The specs: 2018 Jaguar E-Pace First Edition
Price, base / as tested: Dh186,480 / Dh252,735
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder
Power: 246hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 365Nm @ 1,200rpm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel consumption, combined: 7.7L / 100km
The specs: 2018 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy
Price, base / as tested Dh97,600
Engine 1,745cc Milwaukee-Eight v-twin engine
Transmission Six-speed gearbox
Power 78hp @ 5,250rpm
Torque 145Nm @ 3,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined 5.0L / 100km (estimate)
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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