Jeff Bezos adds $20 billion to his fortune

Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, has added another $20 billion (£14 billion) to his wealth after his firm Amazon reported its largest ever surge in profits. Amazon sales increased by 38 per cent in the last three months of 2017, to more than $60.5 billion (£42.4 billion), according to its latest quarterly financial results. For comparison, it took Amazon more than 14 years to make, cumulatively, as much profit as it did in the latest quarter alone. The profits were driven by sales of its voice-activated Echo devices and an increase in the number of Prime members. They were also helped by an increase in holiday shopping online and by Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services.