Billionaire | featured news

Jeff Bezos’ net worth jumped $2.7 billion to $21.5 billion on Friday, the first trading day after Amazon surprised investors with stronger than expected earnings on Thursday after the market closed. Net income for the quarter was 28 cents a share, quadruple the Street consensus at 7 cents, as reported by my colleague Eric Savitz. Net sales increased 34% to $13.18 billion in the first quarter. The stock jumped $30.9, or 15.8%, in one day.

For months now, his name has gone hand-in-hand with that of Newt Gingrich. But as the former House speaker prepares to leave the Republican nomination race next week, Sheldon Adelson has to decide what political causes -- and which candidates -- to support.

Warren Buffett told his company’s shareholders in an open letter Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer. The 81-year-old billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said his condition is “not remotely life-threatening” or debilitating.

Time may be up for Newt Gingrich; but his biggest backer is not going away. Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who with his wife donated $16.5 million dollars to a Newt-linked Super PAC – and later said he might be willing to up that to $100 million – has made it plain he’ll eagerly switch his allegiance to whichever Republican faces Barack Obama in the fall.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson said on Wednesday he plans to spend $35 billion on a mini-Las Vegas strip in Spain where he is courting the country's two top urban areas, Barcelona and Madrid, with plans for a casino complex.

An anti-corruption regulator said it had arrested Raymond and Thomas Kwok, billionaire brothers who run the biggest real estate company in the city, accusing them of suspected corruption.

Thai state media: Thai billionaire who created Red Bull energy drink dies at 89.

Investors taken in by Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford expressed relief and a sense of vindication after a federal jury convicted the jet-setting financier of swindling them out of more than $7 billion. But they said the verdict will never replace the loss of their life savings....

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim retained his position atop Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires on Wednesday with an estimated worth of $69 billion, placing him ahead of Bill Gates at $61 billion and Warren Buffett at $44 billion.

Abraham Foxman, the amiably chatty director of the Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, has a story to tell about his friend, the 78-year-old multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson, who is America's eighth richest man and has given millions of dollars in support of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, was having dinner with Foxman in Las Vegas several years ago. Foxman let slip that he was having to miss an invitation to the White House from the then president, George W. Bush. Foxman explained it was impossible to get a commercial flight. Adelson replied: "If the president of the United States asks you to go, you go." Then he gave Foxman the use of his private plane.