Amazon founder Jeff Bezos retained his number-one spot on the 39th annual US Forbes 400 rich list for the third year in a row.

His fortune lies at $179bn, as of July 2020, an increase of 57 per cent from from last year, despite giving $36bn--worth of stock to his ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos during their divorce settlement in the summer.

Bill Gates maintained his second spot on the rich list, worth $111bn and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg followed with a fortune of $85bn.

Meanwhile, Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, is the richest woman worth $62.3bn.

However, a record 233 US billionaires were not included this year, as they fell short of the $2.1bn minimum needed to make the list. The most notable is Adam Neumann of WeWork who appeared on Forbes' list in 2019 with a net worth of $4.1 billion. However, Forbes went on to lower its estimate of his wealth to at most $600 million.

At the same time, Forbes said there are 18 newcomers on this year’s list.

This includes, Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom Video Communications, with a net worth of $11bn, Jim Koch, co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, producer of Samuel Adams Beer, with a net worth of $2.6bn and Trevor Milton, founder of electric and hydrogen-electric truck maker Nikola who is the youngest newcomer at the age of 38 and worth $3.9bn. 

Meanwhile US president Donald Trump’s ranking dropped to number 352 from 275 last year as his net worth dropped to $2.5bn from $3.1bn. The Trump Organisation which owns office buildings, hotels and resorts all took a hit during the pandemic.

The wealth on this year's list totalled to $3.2trn, an increase of 8 per cent from a year ago. 

Of the remaining billionaires worldwide, 51 per cent are poorer than they were last year. 

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