Bill Gates's Philanthropy Could Lose Him His Spot as the World's Richest

Fortunes would be more than $100 billion each without charity
Jeff Bezos is $1.5 billion away from becoming world’s richest

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By Brendan Coffey

October 12, 2017 at 5:38 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Bill Gates is losing hold of his title as the world’s richest person, with Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos once again mounting a challenge for the top spot. But if Gates weren’t so philanthropic, it wouldn’t even be close.

Gates has a net worth of $86.8 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He would be worth $150 billion if he hadn’t given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996. The index numbers are based on the close of trading in New York Wednesday.