Rich getting richer, the virus widens the gaps - Lifestyle

While many cry - millions of people around the world who have lost their jobs or struggle to keep their businesses crippled by anti-Covid measures - there is a small group of people who can smile: during the coronavirus pandemic the The super-rich have seen their fortunes grow by more than a quarter of their value, bringing their wealth to $ 10.2 trillion.

    To photograph once again the phenomenon of an increasingly marked polarization between a small minority of the very rich and a mass of poor or impoverished people is a report by the Swiss bank UBS.

From April to July, ultra-billionaires increased their wealth by 27.5%, reaching a new high.

Surpassed the previous peak of $ 8.9 trillion at the end of 2017. The number of mega-riches also reached a record number of 2,189, compared to 2,158 in 2017.

benefited above all from bets on the recovery of equity markets, which hit their lowest point during the March and April lockdowns and then rebounded, offsetting much of the losses.

    In particular, some tech companies, often owned by already immensely wealthy people, have seen the value of their shares soar.

    "The billionaires did very well during the crisis," Josef Stadler, senior manager of UBS, told the Guardian.

    "Not only - he says - they rode the storm to the downside, but they also gained on the upside".

    The concentration of wealth, according to the bank's experts, is now back to the levels of 1905, when in the United States families like Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt controlled huge fortunes.

At the time, oil and steel dominated.

Today at the top of the chain is Jeff Bezos.

    Amazon's founder and CEO is the richest person on the planet, with $ 189 billion in assets.

His wealth has increased by 74 billion so far this year, according to Bloomberg's billionaire index.

The boom was caused by the surge in the share price of the e-commerce giant but also by the fact that more and more people are turning to online purchases on its platform.

A trend that the pandemic has only accelerated.