The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade as the gap between the uber-rich and the rest becomes ‘supercharged’, according to Oxfam.
Tesla boss Elon Musk leads the pack among the mega rich but the aid charity said a contender could yet come from nowhere to be the first to amass a fortune of a thousand billion dollars.
Oxfam published the report at the World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual gathering of political and business elites, as it sought to draw attention to the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
Elon Musk is could be the first trillionaire, as the world’s richest man’s wealth has doubled since 2020
Amitabh Behar, the charity’s interim executive director, said the gap has been ‘supercharged’ since the pandemic and the report showed that the world is entering a ‘decade of division’. He said: ‘We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost five billion people have become poorer.
‘Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire within a decade. Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years.’
A trillion dollar fortune, equivalent to about £790bn at current exchange rates, would be a staggering sum, around the same as the GDP of oilrich Saudi Arabia.
Oxfam said the combined fortunes of the world’s five richest men – Musk, Bernard Arnault of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett – has spiked by 114pc in real terms since 2020.
Billionaire Bernard Arnault heads up Luxury goods brand LVMH
However, even Musk would still have some way to go to meet the trillion dollar benchmark. Latest figures from Forbes’s billionaire index suggest he is worth $230bn (£181bn) – an enormous sum but less than a quarter of that level.
US oilman John D Rockefeller is widely considered to have become the world’s first billionaire in 1916.
In contrast with the world’s wealthy elite, Oxfam said nearly 5bn people have become poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world’s developing nations unable to provide the financial support that richer nations could during lockdowns.
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