Stock Markets

5 Oct 2021

Mark Zuckerberg loses $9.5b in just hours as Facebook Shares Suffer Worst Drop

The Index Today

Reports of global outages for users of its social media apps helped fuel the biggest drop in Facebook's shares in nearly a year on Monday (Oct 4). The shares of Facebook closed down to 4.9 per cent, the most since Nov 9 last year. The stock has fallen about 15 percent since hitting a record on Sept 7.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's personal wealth fell by nearly US$7 billion ($9.5 billion) in a few hours, knocking him down a notch on the list of the world's richest people.

The stock slide on Monday sent Mr Zuckerberg's worth down to US$120.9 billion, dropping him below Microsoft's Bill Gates to No. 5 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He has lost about US$19 billion of wealth since Sept 13, when he was worth nearly US$140 billion, according to the index.

On Sept 13, The Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories based on a cache of internal documents, revealing that Facebook knew about a wide range of problems with its products - such as Instagram's harm to teenage girls' mental health and misinformation about the Jan 6 Capitol riots - while downplaying the issues in public. The reports have drawn the attention of government officials, and, on Monday, the whistle-blower revealed herself.