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

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:

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