NEW YORK: Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of technology investment firm SoftBank Group Corp., was the richest Japanese on U.S. magazine Forbes’ 2021 list of billionaires released Tuesday.

Son ranked 29th among the richest people in the world, with a net worth of 45.4 billion dollars.

Tadashi Yanai, chairman, president and CEO of Fast Retailing Co., the operator of Uniqlo casual clothing stores, came second among Japanese and ranked 31st overall, with 44.1 billion dollars.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of U.S. online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. ranked top overall for the fourth consecutive year, with 177 billion dollars, up 64 billion dollars from the previous year.

He was followed by Elon Musk, CEO of U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc., with 151 billion dollars. He was ranked 31st in the previous year’s list.

The assets held by Bezos and Musk increased partly because equity prices of Amazon and Tesla advanced.

The number of people with over 1 billion dollars in assets rose by 660 to 2,755, hitting a record high.

JIJI Press