Elon Musk’s wealth soared to levels only ever achieved by John D Rockefeller. Bill Hwang lost $20 billion in days, Bill Gates – once the world’s richest man – divorced and split his fortune with former wife Melinda French Gates.
For the wealthiest people on the planet, 2021 was a year of enormous gains, extreme losses and unprecedented scrutiny.
Mostly, it was a good time to be a multibillionaire. Soaring equity markets and rising valuations of everything – from mansions to cryptocurrencies to commodities – boosted the collective fortune of the 500 richest people by more than $1 trillion even as the Covid-19 pandemic left the world reeling for a second year.
The gains mean there are now a record 10 fortunes in excess of $100bn, more than 200 above $10bn and Mr Musk reached the level of riches, inflation-adjusted, achieved by modern history’s wealthiest person.
The combined fortunes on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index now exceed $8.4tn, more than the gross domestic product of all countries except the US and China.
Mr Musk ended 2021 with a personal fortune of $273.5bn, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world's second wealthiest person with $194.2bn and LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault with $177.1bn. Rounding off the top five was Mr Gates with $138.3bn and Google co-founder Larry Page on $129.5bn.
The enormous fortunes amassed by the 0.001 per cent also underscored how the uneven recovery from the economic shock of Covid-19 has become more entrenched.
As the very richest benefited from bumper markets and loose fiscal policy, the pandemic pushed as many as 150 million people into extreme poverty, according to World Bank estimates, a number that stands to increase if inflation continues to rise.
“Since the mid-1990s, the share of wealth held by the global richest 0.01 per cent has risen from around 7 per cent to 11 per cent,” said Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics. “The crisis did not reverse this trend. It slightly amplified it.”
From Washington to Moscow to Beijing, politicians ratcheted up rhetoric around the ultra-affluent, vowing to raise taxes and close loopholes in response to public pressure and drained budgets.
In October, US Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden unveiled a proposed levy specifically aimed at 10-digit fortunes.
The billionaires tax, however, quickly drew scorn from the people such as Mr Musk and disappeared within days. An earlier proposal pitched by US President Joe Biden to raise taxes on inheritances and almost double those on capital gains, a prime source of income for many billionaires, also withered.
US Senator Joe Manchin’s objection to the Build Back Better plan could rule out higher taxes of any kind for the rich in the near future.
However, on December 20, Mr Musk tweeted that he would pay more than $11bn in taxes for 2021. The bill comes after Mr Musk exercised about 15 million options and sold millions of shares to cover the taxes related to those transactions.
It was a different story in China. The country’s financial elite had their worst year since Bloomberg began tracking wealth in 2012, losing $61bn as Beijing clamped down on Big Tech and promoted “common prosperity”. Alibaba Group Holding's Jack Ma disappeared from the public stage and property moguls shed $35bn amid a spiralling debt crunch.
No one embodies the squeeze better than China Evergrande Group’s Hui Ka Yan. Once China’s second-richest person, Mr Hui’s net worth fell $17bn last year as his property empire slumped under a crushing debt load. The government urged him to use his personal wealth – including a mega-yacht – to help to repay investors.
Among the richest sources of new wealth in 2021 were less tangible assets: digital assets, shares of newly listed technology stocks and special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs).
The gyrating value of digital coins added then erased billions for cryptocurrency influencer Mike Novogratz, while a record number of initial public offerings lifted the paper wealth of founders such as Brian Armstrong of crypto-trading platform Coinbase and Brazilian FinTech chief executive David Velez.
Former US president Donald Trump, who left office significantly less wealthy than when he entered the White House, could make billions of dollars if his nascent media company can complete its Spac merger with a blank-cheque company.
At the end of the year, 42 members of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index made their debut on the ranking in 2021, mostly due to IPOs.
Overall, it was a year of big swings and massive payouts. With valuations soaring and growing wariness over potential tax increases, many billionaires seized the moment to sell.
A low-profile Chicago clan struck a $32bn deal with private equity for their medical goods supplier, possibly the biggest liquidity event in history for a single family.
America’s richest billionaires unloaded $43bn in stock through the start of December, more than double the $20bn they sold in all of 2020.
Fortunes were reshaped in other ways. The Gates’s divorce meant the Microsoft co-founder ceded assets, while securing Ms French Gates’s own spot on the index, where she is ranked 194th.
MacKenzie Scott set records for philanthropy while her former husband, Mr Bezos, amped up his giving to environmental causes after stepping down as chief executive of Amazon.
Alongside the stratospheric monetary gains, there were implosions. In March, former hedge fund manager Bill Hwang shot from obscurity to infamy in the blink of an eye when his family office, Archegos Capital Management, collapsed under the weight of soured leveraged bets, vaporising a $20bn fortune.
Since the mid-1990s, the share of wealth held by the global richest 0.01 per cent has risen from around 7 per cent to 11 per cent
Lucas Chancel,
co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics
At the centre of it all – the market volatility, whipsawing cryptocurrencies, the tax discourse, the selling, the record-smashing wealth gains – was Mr Musk. The revered and reviled entrepreneur sailed to the top of the index in January and remained on top most of the year, thanks to Tesla’s ascendant stock price, consistent profit growth and the rising value of SpaceX.
The electric car maker’s climb was so steep, it vaulted its third-largest shareholder, Leo KoGuan, a low-profile, Singapore-based retail trader and professed super fan of Mr Musk, on to the index with a $10.8bn fortune.
One constant throughout the year was the world’s richest person’s often-sophomoric tweets taunting regulators, riffing on cryptocurrencies or pondering the obligations, tax and otherwise, of the super wealthy. Mr Musk’s social media feed frequently reflected the conflicted relationship between megabillionaires and everyone else in a volatile, increasingly unequal time.
The world's top 10 richest people in 2021
- Elon Musk – $273.5bn
- Jeff Bezos – $194.2bn
- Bernard Arnault – $177.1bn
- Bill Gates – $138.3bn
- Larry Page – $129.5bn
- Mark Zuckerberg – $128.4bn
- Sergey Brin – $124.6bn
- Steve Ballmer – $120.7bn
- Warren Buffett – $109.5bn
- Larry Ellison – $108.1bn
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
Tips for job-seekers
- Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
- Make sure you are an exact fit for the job advertised. If you are an HR manager with five years’ experience in retail and the job requires a similar candidate with five years’ experience in consumer, you should apply. But if you have no experience in HR, do not apply for the job.
David Mackenzie, founder of recruitment agency Mackenzie Jones Middle East
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
The specs: 2019 GMC Yukon Denali
Price, base: Dh306,500
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Power: 420hp @ 5,600rpm
Torque: 621Nm @ 4,100rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 12.9L / 100km
Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Leading all-time NBA scorers
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 38,387
Karl Malone 36,928
Kobe Bryant 33,643
Michael Jordan 32,292
LeBron James 31,425
Wilt Chamberlain 31,419
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
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)
Know before you go
- Jebel Akhdar is a two-hour drive from Muscat airport or a six-hour drive from Dubai. It’s impossible to visit by car unless you have a 4x4. Phone ahead to the hotel to arrange a transfer.
- If you’re driving, make sure your insurance covers Oman.
- By air: Budget airlines Air Arabia, Flydubai and SalamAir offer direct routes to Muscat from the UAE.
- Tourists from the Emirates (UAE nationals not included) must apply for an Omani visa online before arrival at evisa.rop.gov.om. The process typically takes several days.
- Flash floods are probable due to the terrain and a lack of drainage. Always check the weather before venturing into any canyons or other remote areas and identify a plan of escape that includes high ground, shelter and parking where your car won’t be overtaken by sudden downpours.
Profile
Company: Libra Project
Based: Masdar City, ADGM, London and Delaware
Launch year: 2017
Size: A team of 12 with six employed full-time
Sector: Renewable energy
Funding: $500,000 in Series A funding from family and friends in 2018. A Series B round looking to raise $1.5m is now live.
Scorline
Iraq 1-0 UAE
Iraq Hussein 28’
Vidaamuyarchi
Director: Magizh Thirumeni
Stars: Ajith Kumar, Arjun Sarja, Trisha Krishnan, Regina Cassandra
Rating: 4/5
Switching%20sides
%3Cp%3EMahika%20Gaur%20is%20the%20latest%20Dubai-raised%20athlete%20to%20attain%20top%20honours%20with%20another%20country.%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EVelimir%20Stjepanovic%20(Serbia%2C%20swimming)%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EBorn%20in%20Abu%20Dhabi%20and%20raised%20in%20Dubai%2C%20he%20finished%20sixth%20in%20the%20final%20of%20the%202012%20Olympic%20Games%20in%20London%20in%20the%20200m%20butterfly%20final.%20%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EJonny%20Macdonald%20(Scotland%2C%20rugby%20union)%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EBrought%20up%20in%20Abu%20Dhabi%20and%20represented%20the%20region%20in%20international%20rugby.%20When%20the%20Arabian%20Gulf%20team%20was%20broken%20up%20into%20its%20constituent%20nations%2C%20he%20opted%20to%20play%20for%20Scotland%20instead%2C%20and%20went%20to%20the%20Hong%20Kong%20Sevens.%20%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ESophie%20Shams%20(England%2C%20rugby%20union)%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EThe%20daughter%20of%20an%20English%20mother%20and%20Emirati%20father%2C%20Shams%20excelled%20at%20rugby%20in%20Dubai%2C%20then%20after%20attending%20university%20in%20the%20UK%20played%20for%20England%20at%20sevens.%20%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
More on Quran memorisation:
Three ways to boost your credit score
Marwan Lutfi says the core fundamentals that drive better payment behaviour and can improve your credit score are:
1. Make sure you make your payments on time;
2. Limit the number of products you borrow on: the more loans and credit cards you have, the more it will affect your credit score;
3. Don't max out all your debts: how much you maximise those credit facilities will have an impact. If you have five credit cards and utilise 90 per cent of that credit, it will negatively affect your score.
Anghami
Started: December 2011
Co-founders: Elie Habib, Eddy Maroun
Based: Beirut and Dubai
Sector: Entertainment
Size: 85 employees
Stage: Series C
Investors: MEVP, du, Mobily, MBC, Samena Capital
The biog
Name: Shamsa Hassan Safar
Nationality: Emirati
Education: Degree in emergency medical services at Higher Colleges of Technology
Favourite book: Between two hearts- Arabic novels
Favourite music: Mohammed Abdu and modern Arabic songs
Favourite way to spend time off: Family visits and spending time with friends
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20OneOrder%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20March%202022%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Tamer%20Amer%20and%20Karim%20Maurice%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Cairo%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20staff%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E82%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Series%20A%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Sui Dhaaga: Made in India
Director: Sharat Katariya
Starring: Varun Dhawan, Anushka Sharma, Raghubir Yadav
3.5/5
The biog
From: Upper Egypt
Age: 78
Family: a daughter in Egypt; a son in Dubai and his wife, Nabila
Favourite Abu Dhabi activity: walking near to Emirates Palace
Favourite building in Abu Dhabi: Emirates Palace
Bio
Born in Dubai in 1994
Her father is a retired Emirati police officer and her mother is originally from Kuwait
She Graduated from the American University of Sharjah in 2015 and is currently working on her Masters in Communication from the University of Sharjah.
Her favourite film is Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro
