Former President of the United States Donald Trump entered, for the first time, the group of the 500 richest people in the world, with an estimated fortune of US$6.5 billion, according to Bloomberg.
With this, Trump achieved this position after his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), completed a merger process with Digital World Acquisition, after 29 months.
As a result, the company’s shares are now owned by the billionaire and this participation guaranteed an increase of US$4 billion in his assets.
Furthermore, TMTG shares — which began trading this Tuesday (26) on Nasdaq, one of Wall Street’s main exchanges — rose more than 40% in its first trading session, which should further increase its fortune. Trump.
Trump Media owns the social network Truth Social. On its website, the company describes itself as “a unifying force for free speech” that is “cancelling cancel culture and “free from political discrimination.”
Despite this, social media provides an environment for interaction between Trump supporters, especially now, in his campaign for a new election in 2024.
The billion-dollar merger agreement took years to complete, as it was the target of investigations by the United States Department of Justice. The company even reached an agreement worth US$18 million with the American market regulator, on charges of inaccurate disclosure of business information, in July last year.
According to the Reuters news agency, the deal should inject around R$300 million into Truth Social’s cash flow, after the company lost US$10.6 million from its operations in the first nine months of 2023.
It is worth remembering that the news of the conclusion of the agreement comes at a difficult time for the former president. He was ordered to pay nearly $500 million in bail in a civil fraud case in New York. However, after an appeal, the court reduced the payment amount to R$175 million this Monday (25).
Although he was already a billionaire, with a fortune of more than US$2 billion, Trump faced problems paying the bail amount because of where that money was located: most of his assets were in real estate and, therefore, did not have good liquidity for resolving debts in court.
Now, the former president has promised to pay the million-dollar bail quickly.
