Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s fortune has passed $100bn (\u00a376bn) for the first time, adding him to an exclusive club of the world\u2019s centibillionaires, after Facebook\u2019s shares surged on news it is to launch a rival to the video-sharing app TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook announced the US rollout of Instagram Reels, its answer to the Chinese app TikTok, as the US president, Donald Trump, issued bans on American companies transacting with its parent company, ByteDance, and Tencent, which owns the WeChat messaging service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg owns a 13% stake in Facebook and his net worth passed $100bn as shares in the social network surged by 6% on investor optimism over the prospects of the TikTok rival.
The 36-year old joins the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, Microsoft\u2019s founder, as the only people who have centibillionaire status, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been a surge in usage for technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook as the public has turned online while under lockdown conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. Zuckerberg\u2019s net worth has risen by about $22bn this year, while Bezos\u2019s fortune has jumped by more than $75bn. Apple could hit a valuation of $2tn in trading on Friday, the first US company to reach such a milestone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US senator Bernie Sanders wants to introduce legislation to tax what he called \u201cobscene wealth gains\u201d during the coronavirus crisis, despite the US economy shrinking at its fastest pace on record. The \u201cMake Billionaires Pay Act\u201d would impose a 60% tax on wealth gains made by the super-rich from 18 March through to the end of the year. The revenue would be used to cover the healthcare expenses of US citizens struggling to pay.
The five largest US tech companies \u2013 Amazon, Apple, the Google parent, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft \u2013 have market valuations equivalent to about 30% of US gross domestic product. Their combined value has almost doubled in the last two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook while at university in 2004, has said he eventually plans to give away 99% of his Facebook shares over his lifetime through the charitable foundation he set up with his wife, Priscilla Chan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Thursday, Trump announced a sweeping ban on US companies transacting with ByteDance as Microsoft negotiated the potential acquisition of TikTok\u2019s operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ByteDance faces a deadline of 15 September to either sell its US operations to Microsoft, or another US firm such as Apple, or face a ban.
The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s fortune has passed $100bn (\u00a376bn) for the first time, adding him to an exclusive club of the world\u2019s centibillionaires, after Facebook\u2019s shares surged on news it is to launch a rival to the video-sharing app TikTok. Facebook announced the US rollout of Instagram Reels, its answer to the Chinese app TikTok, as the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23194,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23192\/revisions\/23194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}