Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, by some measures, surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world this year.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the fifteen richest people in the world are:
You'll note ten of the top 15 are from the US.
Other reports vary, based on how they evaluate the wealth of a person.
For example, HowMuch.net recently used Forbes' data and research to depict the richest person on each continent
They placed Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and MD of Reliance Industries, ahead of Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba group, in terms of wealth, thus highlighting how ranking can change based on how you measure a person's riches.
Here's how HowMuch.net broke down each continent for the richest person:
Europe:
North America and the Caribbean:
Africa:
Oceania:
Asia, the Middle East and Russia:
(Interestingly, Jack Ma doesn't feature on this list either.)
South America:
The richest woman in the world in 2017 according to Forbes was Liliane Bettencourt, with $39.5 billion.
She's the heiress to the iconic cosmetics company L’Oréal, founded by her father Eugene Schueller in 1907.