Baku, April 4, AZERTAC

French businessman and investor Bernard Arnault retained his position as the world's richest man on Forbes' billionaires list this year, increasing his lead on social media and ecommerce behemoths Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to amass a staggering £233billion fortune, according to Daily Mail.

Overseeing the LVMH luxury fashion empire of 75 brands and cosmetics labels, including Louis Vuitton, Sephora and Tiffany & Co, the 75-year-old from Roubaix, France was worth an estimated $22billion more than he was 12 months ago, according to Forbes' calculations.

Arnault enjoyed record success with the conglomerate into 2024, adding some $22billion to his personal wealth and putting him $38bn above runner-up Elon Musk, whose fortune climbed a more modest $15billion up to $195billion this year.

The Tesla and Space X founder, who acquired Twitter in October 2022, continues to battle for second place with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The latter had an estimated personal wealth of $194billion this year as Forbes recorded the highest number of billionaires worldwide ever.

Mark Zuckerberg filled the fourth spot, coming in behind X owner Musk as the second-richest social media owner - despite Meta's ownership of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp among others. Zuckerberg nonetheless saw a meteoric rise through 2023, his fortune up some $116billion thanks to Meta stock nearly tripling amid cost-cutting layoffs and ventures into AI and the metaverse.

Larry Ellison, Chief Technology Officer at software company Oracle is the entrepreneur in fifth place this year with an estimated person wealth of $141billion. Again, the result is a marked success for the American businessman who last year was estimated to be worth $107bn.

A record-breaking 2,781 billionaires now lay claim to the title, up from 2,640 last year. Still reeling from post-pandemic complications with hiring, firing and supply chains the number of global billionaires fell the year prior from 2,688.

Today, the super-rich are collectively worth a staggering $14.2trillion in total, $2trillion more than they were worth last year - and nearly half the GDP of the United States.

2023-2024 was an especially big year for American investors, with eight of the ten richest people in the world from the US.

Closing in on the top ten were Spain's Amancio Ortega - of fashion brand Zara - in 13th, Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu and family - of Telecom - and France's Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and family - of L'Oréal.

Michael Platt, co founder and CEO of BlueCrest Capital Management, and James Ratcliffe, founder of chemical company Ineos Group, were the only two Brits to make the top 200 list, placing 104th and 111th with respective fortunes of $18billion and $16.5billion.

The U.S. now boasts a record 813 billionaires worth a combined $5.7billion.

China reports the second highest number of billionaires worldwide, with 473, though they are worth a combined $1.7trillion.

2024 also saw a number of newcomers on the scene, with Taylor Swift reporting a net worth of more than a billion dollars for the first time in her career, after 17 years climbing to the top of pop.

By popularity, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Michael Jordan topped the list of fan favourite billionaires, recording personal fortunes of $5.5billion, $4.8billion and $3.2billion respectively.