The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks the top 300 wealthiest people in the world, and according to the Index, they all started 2014 $524 billion richer than they were in 2013, Yahoo.com reported.
Bill Gates is at the top of the list, adding $15.8 billion to his already large fortune, according to Yahoo Finance. The founder and chairman of Microsoft experienced a 40 percent raise in Microsoft shares in 2013 and profited with other investments through Cascade Investment.
"It is one of biggest gains we've seen in a really long time - probably in the last decade," Bloomberg Billionaires Editor Matt Miller, according to Yahoo Finance.
Behind Gates is Sheldon Adelson the founder of the largest casino company in the world, according to Yahoo Finance. In 2014 Adelson added $14.4 billion to his net worth, mostly because of his casinos success in Macau, a Chinese city.
Eike Batista, once Brazil's richest man, was ranked last on the index after losing $12 billion in 2013, starting 2014 with a negative net worth, according to Yahoo Finance.
According to Miller, Batista's situation is "quite unusual" and that he's "never really seen anything happen like this before," Yahoo Finance reported. Batista was the 8th richest person in the world at one point, but after his oil company filed for bankruptcy and dozens of the startups he owned began to borrow against each other and stopped delivering to investors.
According to Miller, the gain in these billionaire's net worth are due to the easing of central bank easing interest rates and equity markets rise and assets tend to go up when equity markets rise, according to Yahoo Finance.
In the technological world, the biggest gainer was Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, whose shares more than doubled in 2013, Yahoo Finance reported.
