There is a point in wealth after which even the sky seems limited. For those who have made it to this gilded stratosphere—or were born into it—it’s not out of line to spend $300,000 on a pet fish and then hire a plastic surgeon to give it an eye lift and fix its crooked jawline.

Wang Jianlin made his first public appearance since Wanda Group was named on June 22 among several global asset buyers in a probe by the Chinese bank regulator. No wrongdoing was indicated.

It’s a milestone Warren Buffett probably wishes he weren’t approaching. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the conglomerate he’s run for more than five decades, reported Friday that it held just shy of $100 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter.

A California court has ordered a Silicon Valley billionaire to restore access to a beloved beach that he closed off for his private use, a major victory for public lands advocates who have been fighting the venture capitalist for years. An appeals court ruled on Thursday that Vinod Khosla, who runs the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures and co-founded the tech company Sun Microsystems, must unlock the gates to Martins Beach in northern California by his property.

Bill Gates donated 64 million of Microsoft’s shares valued at $4.6 billion on 6 June, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing released on Monday.

A controversial Chinese billionaire in self-imposed exile blasted on Thursday what he said was a small clique of corrupt "kleptocrats" running China — as he also warned of a wave of Chinese spies being dispatched to the United States in recent months. Guo Wengui's comments came as the Chinese government has ramped up allegations that the real estate magnate has engaged in a slew of crimes, including sexual assault — and as a number of companies and people whom Guo has criticized press lawsuits accusing him defaming them with false allegations.

The world’s wealthiest individuals are on a roll with billionaires in Asia leading the pack. Billionaire wealth increased 17 percent to $6 trillion in 2016, after a decline the previous year, UBS Group AG and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report issued Thursday. Led by China, the number of the region’s billionaires surpassed the U.S. for the first time. But don’t shed a tear for the richest folks in the U.S.: American billionaires still control the most wealth at $2.8 trillion.

The number of billionaires worldwide rose above 1,500 last year, a 10 percent jump from 2015, due largely to a surge in Asia, Swiss banking giant UBS and auditors PwC said Thursday. In an annual report, UBS and PwC said that last year marked the first time it recorded more billionaires in Asia (637) than in the United States (563), crediting the rise of China's entrepreneurs. Europe took third spot in the report's billionaire database with 342.

The total number of billionaires and their collective wealth has now reached an all time high — breaking the $6 trillion mark, according to the latest annual billionaires report from UBS and PwC. Despite geopolitical uncertainty, their numbers have swelled by 10 per cent to 1,542 by the end of 2016, with a new member of the global elite UHNW club being minted every two days in Asia.

Turns out Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may have greatly exaggerated his wealth, according to a report from Forbes. Just a year ago, Forbes listed Ross' net worth at $2.9 billion and included him in the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans by net worth. The new report says Ross had just under $700 million in assets. It cited financial-disclosure forms filed by Ross after being nominated for his Commerce secretary.

The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people. Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”.

In response to the recent leak of 13.4 million files from two offshore service providers earlier this week, which documents how the world’s wealthiest individuals and corporations avoid paying taxes on their fortunes, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned that the world is quickly becoming an “international oligarchy.” “The major issue of our time is the rapid movement toward international oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global economy...

I live in Sag Harbor, New York, out on the East End of Long Island in the Hamptons. The village of Sag Harbor was founded in 1707, and the house I rent is a Saltbox built in 1703. Just down the street is the Egyptian Revival Old Whaler’s Church, built in 1844. It’s a beautiful wood-frame clapboard structure. Hell, everything is beautiful out here — East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Southampton, Amagansett, the potato fields and beaches of Sagaponack — driving around here, you can’t go around a bend without seeing something that takes your breath away.

The globe’s richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, according to a new report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else. The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn), according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published on Tuesday.

A provision in the tax plan Republicans are championing in Congress has a peculiar benefit that would help out the massively wealthy in America: A tax exemption for owners of private jets. The cut out is just one of many small peculiarities in the tax plan, which includes provisions that would give craft beer producers tax breaks, and some that change how people can buy and sell stocks.

In the classic Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged, the rich go “on strike” – withdrawing their services and disappearing from society in protest against taxes and regulation. Weary of carrying an ungrateful world on their shoulders, business leaders and other top income earners finally shrug, and leave the world without them. The book’s metaphor inspires political rhetoric to this day: if you tax the rich, they will leave.

On one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, Black Friday, thousands of Amazon employees decided it was also a good day to walk off the job. Warehouse workers in several distribution centers in Germany and Italy took the day off to demand higher wages and better treatment. In sharp contrast, on the same day, the net worth of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos hovered around $100 billion, easily making him the wealthiest person on the planet.

The richest 0.1% of the world’s population have increased their combined wealth by as much as the poorest 50% – or 3.8 billion people – since 1980, according to a report detailing the widening gap between the very rich and poor. The World Inequality Report, published on Thursday by French economist Thomas Piketty, warned that inequality had ballooned to “extreme levels” in some countries and said the problem would only get worse unless governments took coordinated action to increase taxes and prevent tax avoidance.

Bitcoin was a whisker away from hitting $20,000 over the weekend, hitting a high of $19,771 yesterday, according to the CoinDesk price index. At that price, bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, would have been worth $19.4 billion, or the 44th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes rich list.

The richest 10% of people produce half of Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%, British charity Oxfam said in a report released Wednesday. Oxfam published the numbers as negotiators from 195 countries met in Paris to wrangle over a climate rescue pact.