The fall of the super millionaires who made their fortune with COVID

In less than three years, life has changed for all of us, changing the way we live, work and educate ourselves. Economically, it shot up or went bankrupt some businesses, making some immensely rich and others poor, but those whose fortunes grew extraordinarily by owning companies closely linked to the pandemic have seen their wealth collapse at a rate only comparable to other episodes such as financial crisis of 2008, on average they have fallen 58% from their peak.

However, in most cases, the owners of these companies remain billionaires, with a substantially higher average net worth compared to before the pandemic, and several of them have taken advantage of the peak valuation of their companies and sold some of them. of their shares at a very good price.

The billionaires whose wealth has multiplied at a dizzying rate thanks to the changes brought about by Covid-19 and cheap money, are a group of 58 who have seen their fortunes fall faster than they rose. They, all men, met needs that desperately need to be met, but it wasn’t long-term, investors looking for growth no longer see it in working from home, or in Covid-19 vaccines.

The company that was most valued was Moderna Inc. with its messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19, leading the fortune of the scientist Stephane Bancel to grow by some USD 15,000 million due to its effectiveness and the speed with which it was produced. however, this figure has dropped by 75%, to USD 3.7 billion.

The Frenchman Stephane Bancel is the Moderna CEO in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Stephane Bancel, 50, joined the company in July 2011, one year after it was founded. The company spent nearly a decade developing messenger DNA vaccine technology, and its Covid-19 vaccine was its first commercialized drug. In the coming years, it hopes to achieve effective treatments for other diseases such as cancer or HIV.

Bancel, which owns about 8% of Moderna’s shares, indicated in May 2022 that it would donate USD 355 million to social and climate-related causes corresponding to the profits from its share compensation plan; His Jesuit training in helping others has influenced this decision, along with his wife they consider that they have more money than they need.

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom which operates from Palo Alto, California, USA.

Eric Yuan, owner of Zoom Video Communications Inc., saw his fortune grow to $28.6 billion as his virtual communication tool became the most widely used around the world, but heightened competition and the opening of the economy to pre-pandemic levels brought as a result of a sharp drop in its share price to USD 4.6 billion

Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 inspired in part by the inconvenience he had in seeing his girlfriend (now wife) when they were students and required traveling 10 hours to see her. Her video conferencing solution had steady pre-pandemic growth and by 2017 was valued at $1,000, but it was the pandemic that turned it critical as the world turned to it for work and socializing.

Yuan donated a third of his stake in Zoom in 2020 and raised $2.6 billion from the sale of shares at the beginning of 2020.

Erni Garcia, CEO of Carvana lives in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

Father-son duo Erni Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III, owners of Carvana Co., an online second-hand car dealer, managed to amass a $21.8 billion fortune at the height of the pandemic, thanks to the lawsuit. that had the sale of cars and trucks, they sold more than 200 thousand vehicles in the first months of 2021.

However, the company, founded in 2013, was on the verge of bankruptcy last December due to the rise in interest rates that caught them with low demand for cars and high inventories purchased at high prices that make it difficult for them to make a profit, having to lay off 1,500 employees. The shareholders consider that the company does not have a clear profitability strategy and have withdrawn their support. Erni Garcia III’s fortune dipped to $4 billion, though he pocketed hefty profits selling billions of dollars worth of stocks during the rally.

Forrest Li, CEO of Sea lives in Singapore

Forrest Li was briefly the richest person in Singapore in 2021, as his fortune rose to nearly $22 billion due to the pandemic, consumers stuck at home turned to online shopping and gaming, so Sea shares Ltd. (a holding company that includes Garena, SeaMoney and Shopee) increased by 2,300% between 2017 and 2021, however, the decline has been rapid, today it is valued at USD 4,300 million.

News that its main backer, Tencent Holdings Ltd., was selling part of its stake rocked investors, and then came a blow when India abruptly banned its most popular mobile game. Now, as consumers reduce their online spending due to rising interest rates and inflation, the company is cutting jobs and top management is forgoing salaries to curb mounting losses and win back investors. .

Bom Kim – Cuopang, lives between South Korea and the United States

Returning to South Korea after leaving Harvard Business School, Bon Kim started Coupang in 2010, an e-commerce company often referred to as the “Amazon of Korea” that operates in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Kim took advantage of the online shopping boom and debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, at which point investors rushed to buy his shares, sending the value of his 10% stake skyrocketing to $9 billion. However, just a few months later, the company faced criticism from unions and customers over the working conditions of its employees, and its downfall has revalued its fortune to $2.9 billion.

Its backer, SoftBank Group Corp., which invested $2 billion in the company in November 2018, sold 50 million shares of Coupang in March at $20.87 each, compared to the IPO price of $ 35 dollars.

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, in Park City, Utah, USA.

Matthew Prince co-founded the web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare in 2009, which he and his two partners took public ten years later. In 2021, the valuation of the company of which he owns about 12%, led him to be ranked with the #229 fortune in the world according to Forbes magazine, a year later he had dropped to position #995, in twelve months he lost more of USD 2,900 million, although his fortune is still considerable, of USD 1,800 million.

Lawyer at the University of Chicago and with an MBA from Harvard, he began his career as a ski instructor before working as an adjunct professor of law, in 2001, he founded Unspam, to protect users online. He started tracking spammers and evolved to stop them. He created Cloudflare in 2010, with the aim of protecting companies from cyber-attacks that try to take down their websites and as a mechanism to optimize the network of geographically distributed servers for content distribution, a solution that became highly appreciated as activities businesses through the internet increase.

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