Larry Ellison Dropped $3.5 Billion on Friday

The world's wealthiest men and women have been reaping the rewards of a soaring stock market over the past couple of years. The Federal Reserve has been pumping trillions of dollars into the system, and this has resulted in soaring equity prices.

However, the euphoria subsided last week when the FOMC gave their first real indication as to when their bond buying spree might be coming to an end. If the economy continues to perform as expected, Ben Bernanke said, the fiscal stimulus would likely be completely phased out by 2014.

The markets were seemingly surprised by just how fast the program will be phased out, and this resulted in markets around the world plummeting for two days straight.

Thanks to this steep decline, many of the world's richest men and world saw billions of dollars lopped off of their net worths.

Things were particularly ugly for two of the world's richest men, Carlos Slim and Larry Ellison.

Oracle reported their quarterly earnings on Thursday afternoon, and investors did not like what they heard. Shares of Oracle fell over 9% on Friday, erasing roughly $15 billion in total market capitalization.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle, owns a 1,143,934,580 share stake in the company, which resulted in his net worth declining by over $3.5 billion on Friday (don't feel too bad for Larry, though, as he is still worth over $37 billion).

Carlos Slim, formerly the world's richest man, is now in danger of falling to #3 on the Bloomberg Billionaire list after a particularly rough couple of weeks.

According to Bloomberg, Slim's net worth has fallen by $13.6 billion this year, thanks, in large part, to a decline in shares of America Movil SAB, of which Slim has a 15.4% stake. Bloomberg estimates that Carlos Slim's net worth suffered a $5 billion decline in the last week alone.

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Source: Bloomberg Billionaire Index

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