Warren Buffett is back among the richest five people in the world amid steep drops in tech stocks that are eroding the wealth of Silicon Valley executives.
Buffett’s fortune has grown 7.2% this year to $116.7 billion as shares of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have rallied, putting him in fifth place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Over the same period, tech billionaires such as Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos have seen their net worths drop by 15% or more.
It’s the first time in a year that Buffett, 91, has ranked this high among the listing of the world’s 500 richest people. He fell as low as 11th in October.
Investors have fled tech stocks in recent weeks, with the Nasdaq Composite Index tumbling 3.6% on Monday to its lowest level in almost a year. U.S. stocks overall fell the most in 17 months as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted fears of prolonged oil shortages and accelerating inflation.
On Friday, Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a purchase of almost 30 million additional shares in Occidental Petroleum Corp., a Houston-based oil and gas company. The deal, worth roughly $1.6 billion at midday Monday, helped draw down his company’s near-record $146.7 billion pile of cash.
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