Losing nearly $1.4 trillion , 2022 becomes worst year for billionaires

 2020 becomes the year to forget the world's richest billionaires

In the face of widespread inflation and central banks tightening monetary policy, 2022 is a difficult year for billionaires who have seen their wealth grow at an unbelievable rate in the era of cheap money. In general, for those who get rich faster this year, their wealth declines more sharply with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Changpeng Zhao, and Mark Zuckerberg alone losing a total of $392 billion.

However, not everyone welcomes such bad news, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has swept up this year richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet while one of the World's richest families like Koch and Mars has also seen their net worth rise.

Here's a rundown of a tumultuous year for the world's richest billionaires:

January - Warning signals started

Elon musk, the world's richest man at the time, lost $25.8 billion on January 27 after Tesla forecasted supply-related challenges. This is the fourth biggest one-day drop in data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and also foreshadows an unfavorable year for Musk.

February- The first people 

Russia's richest billionaire lost a total of $46.6 billion in February when Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine. In a short time, EU and US authorities have targeted Russian 'tycoons" and their businesses with sanctions, making it almost impossible for billionaires to continue to control their assets.

Superyachts were confiscated, the luxury real estate market in London was dangerous and billionaire Roman Abramovich announced the sale of Chelsea. He continues to lose another $47 billion this year as the conflict has not yet subsided.

March- Chinese billionaires started to have a headache

China's market fluctuated sharply, causing the wealth of the country's richest group to decrease by $64.6 billion on March 14. They lost $164 billion in 2022 due to the impact of the epidemic, the real estate market in crisis, strict regulations with the technology industry, and trade tensions with the US.

April- Elon Musk's gambling bet

Shortly after revealing that he holds a 9.1% stake in Twitter. Musk offered to stake in Twitter, and offered to acquire the company on April 14 for $44 billion, This is a huge amount, even for Musk. To raise capital for the deal, Musk borrowed several billion dollars, pledged USD shares, and raised $21 billion in cash.

The market did not perform well for the next few months, Musk tried to find an out and was engulfed in months-long legal disputes with Twitter, when the deal closed in October, Musk's net worth was $39 billion less than when he made the offer.

May- Billionaires buy Chelsea

A group led by financial industry billionaire Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital paid $4.25 billion ($5.25 billion) to buy Chelsea. This is an unprecedented number in the acquisition of football clubs. However, the deal also attracted a lot of "big players", including British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris, Bain Capital coz-chair Steve Pagliuca, and Ken Griffin of Citadel and his family Ricketts.

June-The Waltons own a football team 

Rob Walton- heir to the Walton family fortune agreed to buy the Denver Broncos football team for $4.65 billion, a record-high price in the acquisition of a sports team in the US and continues to emphasize the strength the appeal of owning an NFL(American Rugby League) team.

July- Chinese developers are still struggling because of the crisis

Yang Huiyan has lost her title of Asia's richest female billionaire after her fortune more than halved in seven months. Country Garden, inherited from her father in 2005 has benefited greatly from the housing boom in recent years. But, as Beijing tries to rein in the industry's expansion, projects have stalled and many homebuyers have protested against making mortgage payments. Country Garden's stock price has so far not recovered.

August- Indian Billionaire sublimated

Coal tycoons seem to be the trend from another era, However, in the context of the whole world being disturbed by conflicts in Ukraine. Billionaire Gautam Adani who owns a coal mining empire in India has surpassed Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault to become the third richest person in the world. This is also the highest ranking ever for an Asian Billionaire.

The Adani Group used leverage to rapidly diversify its business. The business pivots to ports, data centers, highways, and green energy. In September, Mr. Adani overtook Bezos as the world's second-richest person.

September- Mark Zuckerberg wobbles

Even in a year in which the technology industry faced general difficulties, Zuckerberg was still poor in a prominent way. In mid-September, Meta boss's net worth fell by $71 billion since January 1, or 57% of his actual income. The reason is that he shifted his focus to the metaverse and the downturn in the technology industry also dragged down the price of Meta stock. This year, Zuckerberg dropped 19 places on Bloomberg's rankings and ended the year in 25th place.

October- Covid billionaires face reality

'The bubble of the Covid economy is rapidly deflated and with it the fortunes of the billionaires who made a lot of money during this period. These include Stephane Bancel of Moderna, ( Ernie Garcia II and Ernie GarciaIII of used car business Carvana, Bom Kim of online shopping platform Coupang, and of course Zoom's Eric Yuan),

The 58 billionaires whose wealth has grown at breakneck speed during the pandemic have seen an average drop of 58% from their peak. These are the categories of the Bloomberg Billionaires index.

November- From 16 billion USD to nothing

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who witnessed the company collapse after falling into a liquidity crisis, revealed huge holes in the balance sheet of the crypto empire, along with its operations, and weak management.

SBF's $16 billion worth of assets were wiped out in less than a week. At his peak, he owned $26 billion. This collapse has affected many politicians in Washington, as the SBF has repeatedly donated to lobbying groups and to charities. Investors in Silicon Valley were also in for a big shock. In addition, about 1 million customers of this exchange so far do not know if they will get their money back.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Binance, CZ lost about $84 billion this year, while other crypto billionaires like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Michael Novogratz, and Brain Armstrong managed to avoid the FTX case.

December- Elon Musk loses his throne as the richest person on the planet

Branded billionaire Bernard Arnault has become the richest man in the world. Although he cannot avoid difficulties in 2022 when losing $16 billion. It is still nothing compared to Musk's $138 billion. Musk's loss of the throne was due to an impulsive decision to buy a social media company that did not do well and borrowed too much-had supply chain problems.

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