Zuckerberg on Brink of Eclipsing Buffett With Facebook at $200

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is poised to leapfrog Warren Buffett to become the world’s third-richest person, according to Bloomberg.

Zuckerberg, more than a half-century younger than the Berkshire Hathaway chairman, is now worth $81.3 billion, gaining $8.5 billion this year as Facebook shook off a data-privacy crisis that caused its stock to tumble 18 percent. Its rebound from a closing low of $152.22 on March 27 to a record $201.45 on Wednesday in New York narrowed the gap with Buffett to $725 million.

The recovery in Facebook shares has rewarded other insiders as well, including COO Sheryl Sandberg, who’s now worth $1.8 billion, and CTO Michael Schroepfer, whose 0.05 percent holding is valued at $224 million.

Zuckerberg, 34, also trails Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person with a $143.6 billion fortune through Tuesday, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with $92.7 billion. The Bloomberg index ranks the world’s 500 richest people and is updated after the close of each trading day in New York.

Buffett, 87, once the world’s wealthiest person, is sliding in the ranking thanks to his charitable giving, which he kicked off in earnest in 2006. He’s donated about 290 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to charities, most of it to Gates’s foundation. Those shares are now worth more than $50 billion. Zuckerberg has pledged to give away 99 percent of his Facebook stock in his lifetime.