Billionaires’ New Riches | MacKenzie Scott’s Transparency U-Turn | Midas Europe List

Plus: Trump Donor Allegedly Used Embezzled Money To Fund The Former President’s Campaign And Lead A Lavish Lifestyle

Good morning.

Billionaires across the globe have collectively added $1.6 trillion to their fortunes, largely thanks to booming markets. We’re also covering MacKenzie Scott’s new, more mysterious round of philanthropic donations, and unveiling the Midas Europe List. Don’t miss this story about Richard Kofoed, a serial entrepreneur from California, who is being sued by former business partners alleging he used embezzled money to fund his lavish lifestyle, and former president Donald Trump’s campaign.

In The News Today

New Zealand has proposed plans to create a “smoke-free” generation by progressively tightening restrictions on the sale of tobacco products to eventually make it impossible to legally take up smoking.

Chinese real estate developer Evergrande was declared a defaulter by Fitch Ratings after failing to supply information about the status of two bond payments whose grace period expired on Monday.

Top Take-Aways

After a stellar 2020, when the super-rich added some $1.9 trillion to their collective wealth, the party continued in 2021: the 2,600-plus billionaires around the globe have gotten $1.6 trillion richer this year.

MacKenzie Scott has decided she won’t reveal to whom or how much money she’s given away in her latest round of philanthropic donations. The billionaire ex wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said it’d be up to recipients to go public about the gifts.

Billionaire Carol Jenkins Barnett, heir to the Publix Super Markets fortune, a supermarket chain that boasts 225,000 employees in nearly 1,300 stores across the U.S., has died at age 65. Barnett owned a minority stake in the business, founded by her father George Jenkins in 1930.

Worried that cyberattacks are “a threat to humanity,” New York-based startup Claroty claims it’s the best-funded company in its field thanks to a $400 million Softbank-led round that pushes its valuation to nearly $2 billion.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri called for the creation of an industry body to determine best practices for tech platforms dealing with underaged users in his testimony to a Senate subcommittee.

“Founders don’t need to look to Silicon Valley—we have enough home-grown success stories,” says Sequoia partner Luciana Lixadru, who scored the second spot on this year’s Midas List Europe, a data-driven ranking of the continent’s boldest 25 startup investors.

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