A slew of America's wealthiest people saw their finances take a hammering last year. Net worths dwindled as rampant inflation, rising interest rates and other economic headwinds pounded stocks, with poor leadership and even alleged “fraud of epic proportions” key factors in certain cases.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the world's 500 wealthiest individuals bid farewell to a staggering $1.4 trillion (£1.2tn) last year. US billionaires, particularly tech tycoons, were hit the hardest, with hundreds of billions of dollars wiped off their fortunes. Read on to see the super-rich Americans who lost the most money in 2022.
All dollar values in US dollars.
Chairman emeritus of the eponymous beauty empire founded by his parents in 1946, Leonard Lauder was at the helm of the family firm for three decades. Needless to say, Lauder derives his wealth from the sizeable stake he holds in the Estée Lauder Companies. Its share price dipped in 2022 as zero-COVID lockdowns in China, a crucial market for the business, sapped global revenue.
The company's stock has picked up over the past three months amid an improving outlook, but it nonetheless lost 33% of its value in 2022. By the same token, Lauder's net worth slumped 30% from $37.7 billion (£31.4bn) to $26.5 billion (£22.1bn). That said, the cosmetics mogul is a major philanthropist, meaning a proportion of the loss could be put down to charitable donations.
Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the New York-based private equity firm Blackstone, also had 30% shaved off his net worth last year as his $37.9 billion (£31.2bn) fortune decreased to $26.5 billion (£22.2bn). A major shareholder of the alternative investment giant he heads, Schwarzman has been at the mercy of Blackstone's stock, which sank 41% in 2022.
The past 12 months haven't been easy for the firm. Soaring inflation, rising interest rates and the poor performance of the stock market, as well as geopolitical woes, have battered Blackstone's bottom line, with the New York-based asset manager's $69 billion (£58bn) retail real estate fund proving especially worrisome.
Dustin Moskovitz endured a double-whammy wealth attack last year as the two main sources of his fortune, his 2% stake in Meta and major holding in Asana, struggled and their respective share prices tanked. Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, Moskovitz helped found Facebook but quit the social media company in 2008 to set up work management software platform Asana.
Last year, Meta stock tumbled 64% for reasons we'll discuss shortly, while the Asana share price fell to record lows, plummeting by 81%. The firm thrived in the pandemic but faltered last year as customer growth stalled. To compound matters, Asana is bleeding cash, which has sent investors running. On another note, Moskovitz is big-time into philanthropy, with donations further eating into his net worth. With all things considered, it plunged by more than half in 2022.
The CEO and president of graphics chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang has a 3.6% stake in the company he co-founded in 1993. The holding's value decreased significantly in 2022 as Nvidia's share price dropped by over 51%, and this translated to a net worth loss of $13.1 billion (£10.9bn) for the Taiwanese-born tech tycoon, who saw 49% of his fortune vanish.
There are several reasons behind the company's poor stock market performance. They include the general slowdown in the global economy, a post-pandemic gaming slump and the cryptocurrency crash – demand for Nvidia's CPUs, which are used in blockchain mining, has fallen flat. Among the other explanations are the firm's backlog issues and the muted reception for its latest graphics cards.
A hefty $15.3 billion (£12.7bn) disappeared from Larry Ellison's net worth in 2022. Be that as it may, the Oracle co-founder, chief technology officer and chairman got off relatively lightly. In percentage terms, Ellison lost the least out of the billionaires featured in this round-up, with a mere 14% hit to his fortune.
Oracle stock was down 7% at the start of 2023 from the same time the previous year, which was a crucial driver for the loss given Ellison owns more than 40% of the business. But the tech magnate's investments also did badly – chiefly Tesla, which was the worst-performing major tech stock in 2022. The Oracle boss is its second-largest individual shareholder after Elon Musk.
Having started 2022 with a net worth of $15.4 billion (£12.7bn), Sam Bankman-Fried lost everything back in November following the spectacular collapse of the $32 billion (£26.9bn) FTX cryptocurrency exchange he co-founded in 2019. The collapse was triggered by a CoinDesk article on 2 November that claimed Alameda Research, the trading firm FTX grew out of, was holding a suspiciously large number of FTT, the exchange's digital currency token.
Rival exchange Binance responded by selling its holdings of the token, leading to a run on FTX that left a $8 billion (£6.7bn) hole in its accounts. After offering to buy the exchange, Binance backed out and FTX was plunged into bankruptcy. The debacle has left numerous investors out of pocket and sent shockwaves through the wider crypto industry. As for Bankman-Fried, he's currently awaiting trial for fraud and other crimes, and could end up spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Together with his family, Nike founder Phil Knight owns a huge chunk of the world's number-one sportswear company. Unsurprisingly, the firm is the sole source of his enormous fortune, which is, however, less enormous now than it was at the start of 2022, having declined by 30% over the past 12 months.
The Nike share price fell by 29% during 2022, hence the almost identical percentage drop in Knight's net worth. The company has been grappling with an inventory glut, which has forced it to slash prices to offload unsold stock, eroding profits. Nike's business has also suffered as a consequence of the zero-COVID lockdowns in China, the firm's top growth market.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who left the company in 2014 and went on to purchase the LA Clippers NBA team, lost 19% of his net worth in 2022. Mirroring other leading tech stocks, the Microsoft share price had a rocky ride last year, slipping 29%, and since Ballmer is the firm's biggest individual shareholder, his fortune has taken a beating.
Philanthropy has also played a part in whittling down Ballmer's net worth. Along with his wife Connie, the former Microsoft boss made a number of supersized donations last year, including $400 million (£336m) to a fund empowering Black entrepreneurs and $425 million (£357m) to create the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health at the University of Oregon.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates now owns only around 1% of the company, so his net worth was far less impacted by the tech firm's disappointing stock market performance in 2022. In fact, the drop in his fortune, which was actually considerable at 21%, can be mostly attributed to Gates' deep-pocketed philanthropy – he is after all, the world's top giver.
In fact, Gates, who intends to donate almost his entire fortune to good causes, really went to town last year. In July, the tech tycoon-turned-philanthropist doled out a record $20 billion (£16.7bn) to the charitable foundation he set up with ex-wife Melinda in order to ramp up spending and address the "huge global setbacks" plaguing our planet.
Staying with exceedingly generous megadonors, MacKenzie Scott has given away more than $12 billion (£10.1bn) in the space of just two years after receiving $35.6 billion (£33.8bn) in Amazon stock following her divorce from Jeff Bezos, so the massive dent in her net worth has a lot to do with charitable giving. Like Gates, MacKenzie Scott has pledged to give away the vast majority of her wealth.
Unfortunately, the tanking Amazon share price, which lost 51% of its value in 2022, means Scott has much less to donate. The e-commerce and cloud-computing behemoth, which boomed during the pandemic, stumbled last year, with inflation, increasing interest rates and other factors eroding earnings.
Through her philanthropy and losses, Scott's net worth dropped by over two-thirds in 2022.
Google co-founder and former president Sergey Brin currently sits on the board of Alphabet, the search engine's parent company, in which he retains a 6% stake. Like other tech companies, Alphabet had an awful 2022 and its trials and tribulations equated to a slumping share price, which shrivelled by nearly 40% over the course of the year.
To blame were the usual suspects of high inflation, rising interest rates and general economic doom and gloom, which led to an ad spending downturn and diminishing profits. Brin, who had to contend with an expensive divorce last year too, saw his net worth fall from $123.6 billion (£103.6bn) at the start of 2022 to $79.4 billion (£66.4bn) by the end of the year, a decline of 36%.
Larry Page, who founded Google along with Sergey Brin, also has a 6% stake in the search engine company. Like Brin, he stepped down from active management of its parent firm Alphabet in 2019 but remains on the board. The firm's tanking share price in 2022 had a similar effect on Page's net worth.
Yet while Page's fortune is down an additional $1.3 billion (£1.1bn), he actually lost less than Brin in percentage terms, with his net worth falling by 35% in 2022 compared to Brin's 36%. This is probably partly explained by Brin's divorce from Nicole Shanahan, who was reportedly seeking a billion-dollar settlement following the split in July.
Meta's nosediving stock is at the crux of Mark Zuckerberg's net worth woes. The social media firm's co-founder and CEO is its biggest shareholder with a 13% stake. Last year, his wealth fell in tandem with the Meta share price, with both losing 64% of their value. The company has been weathering a perfect storm of problems, which has pummelled the stock.
A downturn in ad sales due to Apple's privacy update and the general industry-wide pullback in spending impaired revenue last year. Other issues that worried investors in 2022, and will continue to do so for some time yet, include Meta's ongoing struggle to attract Gen Z users, as well as its forays in the metaverse. The virtual world Meta is betting big on burned through $9 billion (£7.5bn) in the first three quarters of 2022 and is turning out to be a total money pit.
As we've mentioned, Amazon had a difficult 2022, with the e-commence and cloud-computing giant losing more than half of its value. Founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos owns just under 10% of the business, making him its biggest individual shareholder. It stands to reason then that his net worth crashed in 2022, with 44% subtracted from the figure.
Inflation and rising interest rates, as well as the return to bricks-and-mortar stores, sapped sales and put intense pressure on Amazon's already extra-tight margins. The company posted its first quarterly loss since 2015 last year, with growth at its slowest rate for two decades. No wonder the share price and Bezos' wealth have been flopping.
The biggest loser of 2022, Elon Musk saw his fortunes turn sour as his takeover of Twitter descended into farce, with legions of users and advertising alike jumping ship. After attempting to worm his way out, Musk closed the deal in late October, paying an inflated $44 billion (£36.9bn) for the microblogging platform, of which $25 billion (£21bn) came out of his own pocket.
Musk's Twitter antics have spooked investors in his main concern – Tesla, which was already grappling with China's zero-COVID lockdowns, increasing competition, inflationary pressures and higher interest rates. Consequently, its share price plunged by a whopping 69% in 2022. All in all, the Chief Twit ended up letting go of almost half his wealth last year, along with his spot as the world's richest person. Incredibly, nobody in history has lost a bigger fortune.
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