[fm]: Meet Mark Zuckerberg, the World’s Fourth-Richest Man

A young man has an idea in his college dorm room. He drops out of Harvard to focus full time on building that dream. In less than a decade, that spirals into the world’s biggest social network, and the company goes public. A few years later, soon after the man enters his third decade, the idea becomes the fourth-most-valuable company in the world, and that man becomes the fourth richest.

It’s the new American dream, and for Mark Zuckerberg, millennial dad, it’s a new reality. The Facebook founder surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, with a net worth of $50 billion.

Zuckerberg’s rise is remarkable for anyone, particularly remarkable for a 31-year-old, and it’s especially so given that just last week he was ranked number eight on the list. His rapid ascent, in the midst of an otherwise sepulchral global market, began last week, when Facebook reported fourth-quarter earnings that breezed past analyst expectations. Facebook’s stock, as a result, is up 9.5 percent so far this year, catapulting the company into fourth place behind just Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet. The boost has made Zuckerberg the only billionaire in the top five who has seen his net worth rise despite the tough financial headwinds so far in 2016.

While Facebook’s banner start to the year played a part, Zuckerberg’s gain is also a tale of Bezos’s loss. The bottom fell out for Amazon stock last week, when the e-commerce giant whiffed on earnings. The stock is down 18 percent for the year, wiping nearly $11 billion out from under Bezos, the man who was the top-performing billionaire on Bloomberg’s index last year.

Zuckerberg managed to leapfrog up the list quickly, but it will take a social-network miracle for him to propel himself higher anytime soon. Warren Buffett, who holds the No. 3 spot, has nearly $10 billion on him, and Amancio Ortega and Bill Gates have double and triple that, respectively. But don’t count Zuckerberg out. He has baby Max to provide for and running shoes and tons of T-shirts and hoodies to buy. Never underestimate a man with those kinds of needs.

By: Emily Jane Fox. 

Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.

For The #FacebookTeam