Covid, billionaires getting richer with the pandemic. Here's how they make their money

If there is one thing that Covid-19 has not stopped it is the growth of the wealth of billionaires. In the United States alone, the wealth of 643 people grew by $ 845 billion from March 18 to September 15. At the same time, 50 million workers were losing their jobs (14 million are still unemployed) and were receiving government subsidies.

It is a growth of wealth that does not stop. Jeff Bezos’ personal assets on Friday 16 October reached 192 billion dollars, (+ 69.9% since March), Elon Musk at 91.9 billion (+ 273.8%), Mark Zuckerberg at 97.9 billion, (+ 78.6%), just to name the most famous. In addition to the booms of Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, After the United States, China is in second place with 456 billionaires on the list. In April, the largest increase in wealth was awarded to Qin Yinglin, the largest pig farmer in the world: it went from 4.3 billion dollars in 2019 to 23.4 billion today because another epidemic - Swine fever - has caused the price of meat to skyrocket. Covid has also changed the ranking in China.

Jack Ma is no longer in the lead: the creator of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, now at 53 billion, has dropped to third place. It was overtaken by Ma Huateng, president and CEO of Tencent, the super holding that controls WeChat among other things: in March it owned 38 billion, today it has exceeded 61.6 billion. Zheng Shan-shan jumped to second place a few weeks ago: from 1.9 to 55.9 billion dollars in six months thanks to the listing on the stock exchange of two of his groups, Nongfu Spring mineral waters and Wantai Biological Pharmacy.

A lot of money is concentrated more and more in a few hands, but where does it come from?