World News for Students of English

30-11-2020 15:00

The co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, passed Bill Gates to become the world’s second-richest person.

The 49-year-old entrepreneur’s net worth soared from $7.2 billion to $127.9 billion when Musk added $100.3 billion to his net worth this year. It is the most of anyone on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index that ranks the world’s 500 richest people. In January, Musk ranked 35^th.

Musk’s advance up the wealth ranks has been driven largely by Tesla whose market value is approaching $500 billion.

Musk’s milestone marks only the second time in the index’s eight-year history that Microsoft co-founder Bill gates has ranked lower than number two. Gate’s net worth is $127.7 billion; however, it would be much higher if he had not donated more than $27 billion to charity over the years. Gates held the top spot for years before he was bumped by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2017 whose net worth is currently $182 billion.

Difficult words: entrepreneur (a person who makes money from new ideas in business), net worth (the value of the assets and money that a person or business has after the debts are taken away), advance (a forward movement), bump (to remove, to lower).

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