UK Edition
Mark Zuckerberg to end year $16bn poorer after Facebook scandals
Mark Zuckerberg is on track to end the year $16bn (£13bn) poorer than he was when it began, after Facebook's toughest year to date sent shares in the company plunging.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr Zuckerberg's net worth currently stands at $57bn. That still makes him the sixth richest person in the world, but Mr Zuckerberg began the year with a net worth of $73bn. By the middle of July, his fortune had swelled to $82bn.
At that point, he had leapfrogged renowned investor Warren Buffet to become the third richest person in the world, putting him behind only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in terms of the size of his fortune.
From late July onwards, though, Mr Zuckerberg has watched his net worth plunge – around 98pc of his wealth comes from his stake in Facebook and almost a third of the company's value has been lost in the past five months.
After releasing its second quarter earnings in late July, in which Facebook posted a rare miss on revenue and user numbers, the company suffered the single biggest one-day loss of value for any company in US market history.
Since then, Facebook has struggled to claw back the losses, as it has been hit by a string of scandals and calls for an overhaul of leadership.
Following an investigation by The New York Times, which was published last month and which claimed the company had attempted to discredit its critics, investors urged Mr Zuckerberg to step down as chairman.
Facebook's top executives, including Mr Zuckerberg, had initially distanced themselves from the allegations, although the company later admitted that chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg had requested opposition research on the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, after he had been critical of the company.
Facebook is also battling claims that it had considered selling users' data to companies, something it has publicly said it would not do.
According to a cache of emails, dating from between 2012 and 2014, the company had been weighing up whether to charge for access to user data, although it later decided against this. The emails had been seized by Damian Collins, chairman of the UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, and were later released to the public.
Facebook at the time said: "To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone's data."