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The richest individuals in the world added $3 billion to their collective net worth last week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, which values the wealth of the world's billionaires at the end of each day.
A few examples include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who made a pretty penny: His net worth increased by 22 percent over the past two weeks. The richest man in the world, Mexico's Carlos Slim, added $2.55 billion in one week to his $69 billion pot. And Europe has a new third-richest man in Stefan Persson, a retail magnate from Sweden, whose wealth rose $1.9 billion last week to a total of $24.2 billion.
The fortunes of all three billionaires are tied up in their companies: Zuckerberg, of course, took his company public just last month in the much-anticipated IPO that flopped for the average investor. Slim's telecommunications empire saw a spike of 4 percent in shares of his wireless carrier. Persson's wealth derives from the second-largest clothing retailer, Hennes & Mauritz, better known as H&M, which jumped 9.64 percent last week. The stores sell discount clothing.
During the same week of the billionaire wealth boom, the S&P 500 Index dropped 0.58 percent and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose .97 percent.
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