Zuckerberg Drops Off Billionaires Index as Facebook Falls

Washington: Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has dropped off Bloomberg's list of the richest 40 billionaires in the world after his social networking firm’s disastrous launch on the US stockmarket.

Earlier, Bloomberg's Billionaire Index had declared Zuckerberg the 29th richest person on Earth after Facebook Inc. sold 421.2 million shares valued for 38 dollars each.

But now, the Facebook founder has fallen off the list entirely, The Los Angles Times reports.


Zuckerberg's net worth reached a peak of 19.4 billion dollars on May 18, the first day of the Facebook IPO, when shares of the company closed at 38.23 dollars.

By Tuesday, Facebook shares had dropped to just 28.84 dollars a share, and Zuckerberg's fortune was down to 14.7 billion dollars.

Bloomberg's index measures only the wealth of the top 40 richest people in the world, and as of now, Zuckerberg is 800,000 dollars behind the current No. 40 on the list, Luis Carlos Sarmiento, a Columbian businessman.

May 30 (Bloomberg)

-- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Inc.'s co- founder and chief executive officer, is no longer one of the world's 40 richest people.

The 28-year-old's fortune fell to $14.7 billion yesterday from $16.2 billion on May 25, as shares of the world's largest social-networking company dropped 9.6 percent. They slipped another 2.3 percent today to $28.19. 

That extended the stock's losses to 26 percent from the worst-performing large initial public offering in the past decade and cut Zuckerberg's net worth to $14.4 billion.

"It seems to be a clear reflection that there was just too much stock issued, that the valuation was aggressive and that a lot of people who lined up to buy it really had no intention of holding it," Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of BMO Harris Private Bank in Chicago, said yesterday in a telephone interview. The bank oversees about $60 billion of assets.

Facebook shares closed at $38.23 on May 18, the first day they began trading, giving Zuckerberg a net worth of $19.4 billion. The Menlo Park, California-based company ended the day with a price-earnings ratio of 83.1, making it more expensive than 99 percent of Standard & Poor's 500 Index stocks. The company went public as the equity index was heading for its biggest monthly decline since September.

Facebook options trading began yesterday, with volume for puts exceeding calls by 1.2 to 1, data compiled by 

Bloomberg show. More than 200,000 puts were traded yesterday, giving the holder the right to sell the shares at a specified price. June $30 calls were the most active contracts today, with volume at 22,896. They were followed by June $28 puts and June $29 puts.

--With assistance from Inyoung Hwang in New York. Editors: Stephen West, Ben Livesey