THE world’s super-rich increased their combined fortune by a whopping 27.5 per cent between April and July, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report from Swiss bank UBS.

Despite mass job losses and fears of a crippling global recession, billionaires did “extremely well,” increasing their wealth to about $10.2 trillion (£7.82tr), up from the previous peak of $8.9tr at the end of 2017.

It represents that greatest concentration of wealth since the so-called “gilded age” in the US at the turn of the 20th century, when families including the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Carnegies sat on vast fortunes.

Big winners included the world’s richest person, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who saw his wealth increase by $74 billion (£56bn), reaching a total of $189bn.

His global retail and logistics company has come under fire for placing its front-line workers at risk during the pandemic.

Almost 20,000 of its employees have tested positive for Covid-19 since March, according to a report earlier this month.

Despite claims that it has taken measures to protect staff, Amazon has been accused of allowing coronavirus to “spread like wildfire” by the Athena coalition.

Tesla founder Elon Musk, who supported last year’s coup in Bolivia, when hundreds of indigenous people were massacred in a grab for the country’s lithium reserves, saw his wealth rise by a whopping $76bn to a total of $103bn (£79bn).

“From 2018 through July 2020, tech billionaires saw their wealth rise 42.5 per cent to $1.8 trillion,” the report said, and billionaires deriving their fortune from healthcare similarly saw their wealth rise 50.3 per cent to $658.6bn (£504bn).

The fact that billionaires had increased their wealth at such a time when people were losing their jobs and struggling to meet basic needs could lead to public and political anger, UBS spokesman Josef Stradler said.