Donald Trump has tumbled more than 200 places in the world ranking of billionaires as a result of his fortune shrinking by more than $400m (£287m) to $3.1bn over the past year.

According to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, the US President slipped from 544th richest last year to 766th this year. It is the second year running that Trump’s fortune has dwindled.

Q&A The world's wealthiest billionaires Show Hide Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, US. Worth $102bn.

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, US. Worth $90bn. Warren Buffett, investments, US. Worth $84bn. Bernard Arnault, LVMH (luxury goods), France. Worth $72bn. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, US. Worth $71bn.



The drop in Trump’s estimated fortune comes on top of Forbes wiping $1bn off his net worth in its 2017 rankings. The magazine attributed the decline in Trump’s wealth to “a tough New York real estate market, particularly for retail locations; a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign”. Trump reached a $25m settlement in a legal dispute about claims that his Trump University real estate courses allegedly defrauded students.

Losses at his golf courses, including Turnberry in Ayrshire, have increased forcing the President to inject cash to keep them afloat. Losses at Trump Turnberry, his biggest investment outside of the US, more than doubled to £17.6m in 2016. Trump Turnberry owes Trump £112m, nearly double the £63m it owed him the previous year.

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Trump’s slide down the rankings of the world’s wealthy comes as a record 35 people have joined Forbes’ list of billionaires, with the magazine calculating there are now 2,208 people with a net worth of more than $1bn.

The magazine named the Amazon founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, as the world’s richest man with a $112bn fortune, replacing the Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, who fell back into second place with $90bn.

Forbes calculated that Bezos’s fortune, which is mostly held in Amazon shares, increased by $39.2bn over the past year – the biggest ever one-year gain. Amazon’s shares have nearly doubled from $846 a share last March to $1,523 per share last night.

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Collectively, the world’s 2,208 billionaires hold $9.1tn – more than three times the gross domestic product (GDP) of the UK. The billionaires increased their combined wealth by $1.4tn over the past year.



The list is published in Forbes’s latest edition under the headline “The super-rich continue to get richer, widening the gap between them and everyone else”.

Q&A The world's youngest billionaires Show Hide Alexandra Andresen, 21. Worth $1.4bn from family investments, Norway.

Katharina Andresen, 22. Worth $1.4bn from family investments, Norway. Gustav Magnar Witzøe, 24. Worth $1.9bn via family salmon farm, Norway. Evan Spiegel, 27. Worth $4.1bn via Snapchat, US. John Collison, 27. Worth $1bn via Stripe (web payments), Ireland.

Gates, who has topped the Forbes billionaires list for 18 of the last 24 years, saw his fortune rise modestly from $86bn to $90bn.

Forbes calculated that Bezos’s fortune, which is mostly held in Amazon shares, increased by $39.2bn over the past year – the biggest ever one-year gain. Amazon’s shares have nearly doubled from $846 a share last March to $1,523 per share last night.

Q&A The 5 wealthiest women billionaires Show Hide Alice Walton. Worth $46bn via Walmart, US

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers. Worth $42.2bn, via L’Oreal, France. Susanne Klatten. Worth $25bn from BMW and pharmaceuticals, Germany. Jacqueline Mars. Worth $23.6bn from confectionery, US. Yang Huiyan. Worth $21.9bn from property, China.

Collectively, the world’s 2,208 billionaires hold $9.1tn – more than three times the gross domestic product (GDP) of the UK. The billionaires increased their combined wealth by $1.4bn over the past year.

The Forbes list was published as research by the property consultants Knight Frank found that more than 11,000 “ultra-wealthy people” – those with more than $50m to their name – were created last year. The number of people with assets of more than $50m increased to 129,730, up from 118,100 a year earlier – a record increase for a single year.

The rich are getting richer at such a rate that Knight Frank has changed its main metric of measuring the very rich from ultra high-net-worth individuals with $30m in assets to “ultra-wealthy people” with $50m or more. The report predicts that the number of people with more than $50m in assets will increase by a further 40% to 181,000 by 2022.

Vincent White, managing director of Wealth-X, the research service that provided the data for Knight Frank’s report, said the rich were benefiting from “Goldilocks” economic conditions. “Not too hot, and not too cold,” he said. “These make it easier to do business, provide a good environment to raise capital and, above all, encourage entrepreneurialism – the key to wealth creation.”

However, he warned that there is a growing backlash among the general public to the excessive wealth held by the richest 1%.

“There are societal changes taking place over the longer term – the reaction to wealth inequality is a pressure that shouldn’t be ignored,” he said. “There may well be a point where the growth in ultra-wealthy populations doesn’t automatically continue on its current trajectory.”