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The world could have its first billionaire within a decade as the gap between the super-rich and the rest “supercharges”, according to Oxfam.
Tesla boss Elon Musk leads the pack among the mega-rich, but the aid charity said a contender could still emerge out of nowhere to be the first to amass a trillion-dollar fortune.
Oxfam released the report at the World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual gathering of political and business elites, with the aim of drawing attention to the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
Elon Musk could be the first billionaire as the world’s richest man’s wealth has doubled since 2020
Amitabh Behar, interim chief executive of the charity, said the gap has been “supercharged” since the pandemic and the report shows 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 we will have a billionaire within a decade. While to fight poverty we need more than 200 years.’
A trillion-dollar fortune, equivalent to around £790bn at current exchange rates, would be a staggering sum, roughly equal to the GDP of oil-rich 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) have soared 114 percent in real terms since 2020.
Billionaire Bernard Arnault heads luxury goods brand LVMH
However, even Musk would still have a way to go to reach the trillion-dollar benchmark. The latest figures from the Forbes Billionaires Index suggest he is worth $230bn (£181bn), a huge sum but less than a quarter of that level.
American oilman John D. Rockefeller is considered to have become the world’s first billionaire in 1916.
In contrast to the world’s wealthy elite, Oxfam said nearly 5 billion people have been impoverished since the pandemic, and many of the world’s developing nations are unable to provide the financial support that wealthier nations could provide during lockdowns. .