Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg lose $4.5bn as Trump escalates
Mr Bezos, who briefly became the richest person in the world last week as Amazon shares surged, was the biggest loser of the three on Thursday. He saw $2bn (£1.5bn) wiped off the value of his shares in the online retail behemoth in a matter of hours.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos becomes world’s richest person, briefly
Facebook chairman and founder Mr Zuckerberg’s net worth slid by $1.6bn over the course of the day, while Mr Gates lost $850m off the value of his Microsoft stake.
In total, about $30bn was wiped of the value of US blue-chip companies overnight. US markets were bracing for further losses on Friday after European indexes fell in the morning.
Mr Trump’s bellicose warning that North Korea would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it made any more threats against the US, sent global stock markets into a tailspin on Wednesday and European shares entered their third day of falls on Friday.