Jeff Bezos reclaims world's richest person title by overtaking Elon Musk

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has reclaimed the title of world's richest person by overtaking Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Prices of Amazon shares surged over two per cent on Tuesday due to which Bezos surpassed Musk's fortune by $4 billion.

The Forbes Billionaires List, however, said Musk still trails Amazon's Bezos by $7.8 billion. 

Forbes has a more conservative estimate based on the Tesla stake that he has pledged as collateral for personal loans. To take that into account, it applies a 25 per cent discount to his shareholding, according to its report in November.

Musk overtook Bezos as the world’s richest man six weeks ago. His personal wealth was boosted by last year’s more than eight-fold surge in the shares of Tesla, which became the world’s most valuable carmaker.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, plans to build rockets and save the planet.

Bezos, 57, is the latest in a line of corporate titans who have stepped away from their day jobs to devote themselves to other activities.

Bezos, whose net worth is $197 billion according to Forbes magazine, announced on Tuesday he was resigning as chief executive officer of the online retail giant he launched 27 years ago.

He said he would remain executive chairman of Amazon but would devote more time to "passions" such as his private space firm Blue Origin and the Bezos Earth Fund, to which he made a $10 billion donation last year.

In stepping away from the executive suite, Bezos is following in the footsteps of other tycoons who temporarily -- and in some cases permanently -- walked away from running the businesses that made them rich.