Ortega Is Closing In on Gates to Be the World's Richest

EghtesadOnline: Spanish retailer Amancio Ortega is the newest challenger to Bill Gates’s position as the richest person in the world.

News ID: ۷۷۸۸۴۹

30 August 2017

Ortega, 81, founder of Zara parent Inditex S.A. and Europe’s wealthiest person, is $2.2 billion behind the Microsoft Corp. co-founder with a net worth of $83.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, 53, who held the top spot briefly last month, is ranked No. 3 with $82 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Ortega’s fortune has risen 117 percent since the 2012 debut of the Bloomberg index, compared with a 36 percent rise for Gates. Bezos’s net worth has risen 353 percent.

Gates, 61, who has pledged to give the majority of his fortune to charity, has donated Microsoft shares worth $35 billion since 1994. He made his largest gift since 2000 in June when he gave Microsoft shares valued at $4.6 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.