Forbes released their 2017 Billionaires List on Monday to reveal that unsurprisingly, Bill Gates remains the world’s richest man for the fourth year in a row.
The total worth of people on the list amount to a huge £6.18 trillion – more than double the UK’s annual gross domestic product.
Co-editor of the billionaires list, Kerry Dolan, revealed that gains are mostly the result of rising price of oil over the past 12 months and the booming stock market.
Big faller in this year’s list was President Trump, who fell from 324th richest person in the world to 544th due to a drop in the value of office space in Midtown Manhattan.
“Forty percent of Donald Trump’s fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it,” said Forbes. “Lately, the neighbourhood has been struggling (relatively speaking).”
Whilst the US President has refused to publish any of his tax returns to show the true scale of his wealth, during his Presidential campaign he claimed he was worth “an excess of $10 billion.”
Another loser in 2017 was Mike Ashley, founder of Sports Direct. Following the expose on the “victorian workhouse-style” of his store’s warehouses, Ashley’s fortune dropped by about half in the past two years as shares collapsed.
The US has the biggest number of billionaires with 565. This year saw China catching up with 319 billionaires, not including Hong Kong. Forbes list saw four more billionaires from the UK, including Simon Nixon, the co-founder of moneysupermarket.com.
The number of women on the list increased by 25 from 2016, with 2017 having the highest number of female billionaires ever at 227.
The annual Forbes list highlights the uneven global wealth. Oxfam revealed earlier this year that the eight richest people in the world own the same wealth as the poorest half of the population.