Rich get richer, poor get poorer. Something like that.
But mostly, because technology has ASTOUNDING margins and markets that are, essentially, winner takes all, the richest people are now tech instead of oil or resources like they used to be.
We will see the world's first trillionaire. It will happen in our lifetime.
Unless the trend of murdering the ultra wealthy actually kicks off. Then maybe not.
It thought the CEO of a company is not ultra wealthy by a longshot. He's just an employee, well connected, ex-banker or ex-consulting who happens to be a multi-millionaire. Great gig if you can get it, especially if you avoid divorce -or death from stress.. or murder.
The founder of a company -who may or may not be be CEO- is where the the money is at. That's where the value-creation is, and where the ultra wealthy reside. They also usually have somewhat functional families.
But I wanted to answer this question objectively, so here's what I did:
I suppose you can start with a definition of ultrawealthy[1] which is $30m assets minus primary residence. That seemed low to me, but its on wiki, so OK.
Median CEO pay for publicly listed companies was 16.3M, gross. [2] . Take 50% off the top for taxes (US-avg so aggressive), then you are around ~$8M , before expenses. Factor expenses of $1M (probably low, considering consumption goes up relative to income), that means $7M for assets, meaning the avg CEO is working about 5 years to become hit ultra wealth. However, the average tenure for a CEO is 4.8 years [3]
So i suppose a few of the CEOs are eventually making it into the ultra rich, if they can outlast the average tenure on the job.
It depends on company share ownership. If they created the company (and held on to shares), or if they are mostly paid in shares (and held on to shares), if they kept buying as many shares as they could and got paid in as many shares as they could - and held on to them - and the company got amazingly successful (outliers) - then yes.
If they were content to be salaried CEOs, then no.
But mostly, because technology has ASTOUNDING margins and markets that are, essentially, winner takes all, the richest people are now tech instead of oil or resources like they used to be.
We will see the world's first trillionaire. It will happen in our lifetime.
Unless the trend of murdering the ultra wealthy actually kicks off. Then maybe not.