Hurun Research released Wealth Impact 4 months after Covid-19 Outbreak, a special report looking into wealth changes of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs in the four months ending 31 May 2020.

This special report follows on from the Wealth Impact 2months after Covid-19 Outbreak looking into wealth changes in the two months ending 31 March 2020 and the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, which had a wealth cut-off of 31 January 2020.

Stock markets across the world dropped significantly in the first two months after the outbreak but clawed back some of the losses in the second two months.  India, the UK and France were down around 20%, with the NYSE, Japan, HK and Germany down around 10%. Mainland China’s stock exchanges were down slightly at 4%, whilst the only major stock market to see a gain was NASDAQ, up 4%.

The British Pound and Indian Rupee were down 5.6% down 5.3% against the dollar, whilst the Chinese Yuan and Euro were up 2% and 1%.

In the four months since the outbreak, 60% of the Hurun Global Rich List Top 100 saw their wealth rise or stay the same, whilst 40% were down.

Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher, said “Whilst the first two months of the outbreak saw a massive wealth wipeout of the Hurun Global Top 100, the second two months saw a V-shaped recovery for two thirds of the Hurun Global Top 100, reminding us that it is dangerous to bet against the world’s best wealth creators.”

“The two biggest ‘winners’ from the Hurun Top 100 of Covid-19 were online retailers Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Colin Huang Zheng of Chinese low-end ‘social shopping’ giant Pinduoduo, who added US$20bn and US$18bn to their fortunes, pretty much all the gains coming in the past two months. For Bezos and Huang, Covid-19 has seen their wealth increase in the shape of a ‘Nike tick’”, added Hoogewerf.

“Another big winner was Eric Yuan Zheng, 50, of popular video conferencing app Zoom, who saw his wealth triple from US$4.5bn in January to US$13bn today, propelling him up from 555th in the world four months ago to knocking on the door of the world’s Top 100 today.”

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