NEW YORK: The owner of Amazon.com and the Washington Post publications Jeff Bezos has been named the richest man in the world by two major financial publications.

According to Forbes and Bloomberg, the Amazon CEO had a net worth of over $90.5 billion as of the close of markets on Wednesday, while Bill Gates had a net worth of just over $90 billion.

Amazon’s share price has jumped by more than $15 a share overnight, and was recently trading near that level, while Microsoft is down slightly.

If the stocks hold up today the financial institutions declared.

Bezos — who owns around 80 million shares of Amazon — will add more than $800 million to his fortune. That would put him past Gates, assuming the valuations of their non-stock holdings haven’t changed.

Of course, Amazon stock could pull back, or Microsoft could rally. But even if Bezos doesn’t end the day as the richest man, he will likely take the crown from Gates more permanently in the coming days and weeks.

When he hits the mark, Bezos, who started selling books from his garage 22 years ago, becomes the first man to bump Gates from his perch in seven years and is only the sixth man to hold the “richest person” title in the past 30 years, according to Forbes magazine called the Capitalist pool.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2017