Black Friday nets Amazon boss Jeff Bezos a $100bn fortune Black Friday has pushed Jeff Bezos’ net worth past $100bn (£74bn), making the Amazon founder the first business mogul to […]

Black Friday has pushed Jeff Bezos’ net worth past $100bn (£74bn), making the Amazon founder the first business mogul to surpass the mark in 18 years.

Optimism for the pre-Christmas sales caused shares in the retail giant to jump more than 2 per cent, adding $2.4bn to Bezos’ personal fortune and bringing his total net worth to $100.3bn.

Bezos is the first person to pass the $100bn mark since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 1999, according to Bloomberg.

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A previous surge in Amazon shares caused the 53-year old to briefly overtake Gates as the world’s wealthiest back in July, before further fluctuation caused Bezos’ value to slip back down to $89.3bn, behind Gates’ estimated $89.9bn. Bezos then overtook Gates last month when his fortune soared past $90bn.

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Now, there is no doubt as to Bezos’ new status. His fortune has risen by $32.6bn in 2017 alone, and the lucrative winter shopping season is likely to line his pockets to an even greater degree.

Unlike Gates, Bezos has donated relatively little of his fortune to charity and other philanthropic causes. He had given away around $500m of Amazon shares since 2002, according to analysis of Form 4 filings, while Gates gifted $4.6bn in a single donation back in August to an unknown benefactor. Gates and his wife Melinda are believed to have donated around $35bn to charitable causes since 1994.

Bezos took to Twitter for appeal for ideas in how best to distribute his wealth. “I’m thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now—short term—at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact,” he wrote in June, but any immediate charitable plans remain unclear.

Besides Amazon’s online and physical high-street retail presences, hardware business and cloud computing arm, Bezos has turned his attention to space exploration. His Blue Origin aerospace business has lofty ambitions to take tourists into space in 2019, shortly after Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme, and is funded by $1bn of Amazon stock Bezos sells each year.