With Assets of 1.237 Quadrillion Won, Elon Musk Tops Forbes World’s Billionaires List for Second Year

[Financial News] Elon Musk, chief executive officer (CEO) of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Tesla, has been named the world’s richest person for the second consecutive year.
Forbes, the U.S. business magazine that annually estimates the wealth of billionaires around the globe and publishes a ranking, released its 40th World’s Billionaires List on the 10th (local time).
Musk’s wealth was estimated at 839 billion dollars (about 1,237 trillion won), up 2.5 times from last year’s 342 billion dollars (about 504 trillion won), keeping him in first place for the second year in a row.
Google co-founders Larry Page, with 257 billion dollars (about 379 trillion won), and Sergey Brin, with 237 billion dollars (about 349 trillion won), ranked second and third, respectively. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos followed with 224 billion dollars (about 330 trillion won), and Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg came next with 222 billion dollars (about 327 trillion won).
The wealth of former U.S. President Donald John Trump also rose 27% from a year earlier to 6.5 billion dollars (about 958 billion won), placing him 645th overall.
Among Koreans, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong ranked 95th with assets of 27 billion dollars (about 3.98 trillion won), while Yong Ji Chung, head of biotech company Caregen, was listed 268th with 11.7 billion dollars (about 1.725 trillion won).
In addition, Celltrion Chairman Seo Jung-jin ranked 346th with 9.9 billion dollars (about 1.46 trillion won). Hotel Shilla President Lee Boo-jin placed 353rd with 9.8 billion dollars (about 1.445 trillion won), and Hyundai Motor Honorary Chairman Chung Mong-koo came in 359th with 9.7 billion dollars (about 1.43 trillion won).
In this 40th edition of the list, the number of billionaires with assets exceeding 1 billion dollars (about 1.47 trillion won) increased by about 400 from last year to 3,428. Their combined net worth reached 20.1 trillion dollars (about 2,963.7 quadrillion won), a sharp rise from 16.1 trillion dollars (about 2,373.9 quadrillion won) a year earlier.
The rankings were calculated based on stock prices and exchange rates as of the 1st of this month.
Chase Peterson-Withorn, senior editor at Forbes, described it as “a year of billionaires,” noting, “The frenzy in stocks related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) has pushed fortunes to levels that would have been unimaginable before.”
He added, “As a result, over the past year more than one new billionaire has been created every single day.”
newssu@fnnews.com Kim Soo-yeon Reporter