Bill Gates beats Bezos to become world’s richest man

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill
Gates overtook Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person on
Friday, reclaiming the top ranking for the first time in more than two years.

Gates may have been helped in part
by the Pentagon’s surprise decision announced Oct. 25 to award a $10 billion
cloud-computing contract to Microsoft over Amazon.

Shares of Microsoft have since
climbed 4%, giving Gates a $110 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index. Amazon’s stock is down about 2% since the announcement,
putting Bezos’s net worth at $108.7 billion.

Gates, 64, had briefly topped
Bezos, 55, on an intraday basis last month after Amazon posted its first profit
drop in two years, but shares of the world’s biggest online retailer decreased  the decline.

The index, which tracks the wealth
of the richest 500 people, is updated each trading day after U.S. markets
close. Europe’s richest person, Bernard Arnault, is third with $102.7 billion.