While Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk feud over who is more inventive and who gets to go to space first, the business titans are among a group of billionaires in the running for an even less desirable title: World’s Stingiest Billionaire.
Although the pandemic era’s surging stock market has ballooned the fortunes of billionaires to new heights, the wealthiest people in the world have chosen not to keep pace with their charitable giving, according to the Forbes Philanthropy Score.
The team at Forbes adds up all of the lifetime “out-the-door” giving a person has made, and divides that number by the sum of their total current wealth and the total giving amount. The results are categorised into five tiers: less than 1 per cent, between 1 and 5 per cent, 5-10 per cent, 10-20 per cent, and more than 20 per cent.
Private foundations and donor-advised funds don’t count for the Forbes measure, since those “donations” effectively remain under the control of the donor – and also come with generous benefits that enable wealthy people to avoid paying taxes.
. Even with her pace of giving, Scott is wealthier now than she was last year.
The most prolific giver in the Forbes ranking was George Soros, whose US$16.8 billion of giving has outsize his US$8.6 billion net worth.
Former president Donald Trump was not ranked, since he fell US$400 million shy of making the top 400 list. In fact, Trump did not make Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans for the first time in 25 years.
His net worth was estimated at US$2.5 billion – just about US$400 million shy of making the list this year, according to Forbes. The billionaire has lost about US$600 million since the pandemic started as Covid-19 wreaked havoc on the commercial real-estate market.
Since he became president in 2016, Trump’s wealth has continued to decline. From 1997 to 2016, he was ranked among the upper half of Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans, but five years later he’s slipped off the list completely.
Earlier this year, Forbes reported that the former president had dropped 298 spots on its billionaire’s list which was released in April – down from No 1,001 to No 1,299.
Trump’s commercial real estate assets which account for about 75 per cent of his income – have taken a significant hit from the pandemic, Bloomberg reported in March. The former president’s hotel and resort lines, as well as his golf club have also seen declined interest due to travel restrictions.