Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg lost over R60 billion in a day

 ·20 Mar 2018
Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg made headlines this week after another data scandal rocked his company.

The social media giant has been embroiled in a public relations disaster after it emerged that that Cambridge Analytica, the advertising-data firm that reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency, retained information on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent.

The ‘leak’ has placed significant strain on Zuckerberg as he is now expected to answer to both US and EU government officials as to how Cambridge Analytica was able to access the data in 2015, and why the data had still not been erased in 2018.

The scandal has also come at a personal cost for Zuckerberg, reports Forbes, after the company’s stock declined by over 7% by Monday afternoon (US Eastern time), erasing $37 billion of market value.

Zuckerberg who owns about 16% of Facebook’s shares saw his personal net worth fall by $5.1 billion (R61 billion).

According to Forbes’ real-time rankings of the world’s billionaires Zuckerburg dropped enough to become the seventh-richest person on the planet, down from fifth, after falling behind Zara cofounder Amancio Ortega and Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico’s richest person.

However he had rebounded to sixth by Monday morning on the back of some slight gains and a drop in Helu’s net worth.

Below are the world’s richest people as of 20 March 2018:

Rank Name Net worth (dollars) Change (last 24 hours) Source of wealth
1 Jeff Bezos 127.8 billion  – $2.1 billion Amazon
2 Bill Gates 91.1 billion – $499 million Microsoft
3 Warren Buffett 87.4 billion  – $1.3 billion Berkshire Hathaway
4 Bernard Arnault 76.1 billion $29 million LVMH
5 Amancio Ortega 70.3 billion + $613 million Zara
6 Mark Zuckerburg 69.6 billion  – $5 billion Facebook
7 Carlos Slim Helu 69.4 billion –  $151 million Telecom
8 Larry Ellison 63 billion – $343 million Software
9 Charles Koch 61 billion $0 Koch Industries
9 David Koch 61 billion $0 Koch Industries

Read: The jobs and companies that have created the most billionaires

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