Bill Gates unseats Jeff Bezos as world’s richest person according to Bloomberg

Bill Gates has regained the title of the richest person in the world, surpassing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The New York Post reports that Mr Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has a net worth of $US110 billion, which topped Mr Bezos’ total worth of $US109 billion, according to the index.

Mr Gates briefly held the top spot last month after Amazon suffered a 28 per cent drop in profits the three months ending in September, but quickly lost the spot again to Mr Bezos, CNN reported.

Mr Gates’ ascent to the top spot was spurred by a 48 per cent increase in Microsoft shares, which lifted his net worth, according to CNN.

Mr Bezos’ wealth was also impacted by his divorce settlement with his former wife MacKenzie.

Their divorce settlement left her with 19.7 million shares of Amazon.com valued at more than $38 billion, according to Bloomberg.

TEN RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
1 — Bill Gates (Microsoft founder) $110b
2 — Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) $109b
3 — Bernard Arnault (LVMH Moët Hennessy) $103b
4 — Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) $86.6b
5 — Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) $74.5b
6 — Amancio Ortega (Zara) $67.6b
7 — Larry Page (Google) $64.3b
8 — Sergey Brin (Google) $62.4b
9 — Charles Koch (Koch Industries) $61.7b
10 — Julia Flesher Koch (David Koch’s widow)