Elon Musk has lost his title as the world’s richest person as the value of his electric vehicle company Tesla continues to decline. Musk has lost the top rank to France’s Bernard Arnault, CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH.
Born in South Africa, Musk, who recently purchased Twitter, is the CEO of Tesla and its largest shareholder. Since Musk’s initial bid for Twitter in April, the electric car firm has lost more than half of its market value.
Tesla stock was trading at $340.79 (£275.27) on April 13, the day before Twitter reported in a regulatory filing that the billionaire had launched a $43.4 billion hostile proposal. Tesla’s stock price has dropped by more than 50% since then, and it is now trading at around $160.
According to reports, new drops in the car company’s share price at the start of the week wiped out approximately $7 billion from Musk’s fortune. It calculates that he is currently worth approximately $177 billion, compared to Arnault’s net worth of $188 billion.
Arnault briefly surpassed Musk a week ago as a result of share price changes, but the Tesla CEO reclaimed the top spot. Musk has sold around $20 billion in Tesla stock since April to fund his purchase of Twitter.
Tesla’s market value has fallen as a result of dismal quarterly results and concerns about disruption at one of its Shanghai operations.
Investors are concerned that Musk would be distracted by his other companies, including SpaceX and operating Twitter. He is also frequently chastised for some of the inflammatory tweets he sends to his 121 million followers.
Also, recently, Elon Musk sold Tesla Inc. stock for the fourth time this year, bringing his total this year to nearly $40 billion as the company’s shares slumped to two-year lows.
Tesla’s CEO sold over 22 million shares of the electric-car maker for $3.58 billion, according to a filing.
Tesla lowered the pricing of two of its models by 5-9% in October. Many saw this as an effort to boost the automaker’s competitive position in order to raise demand and the number of orders.
According to CnEVPost, which covers Chinese electric vehicle news, the Tesla Shanghai plant is apparently set to curtail output since demand is falling short of forecasts.
Bernard Arnault, the new number one on the Forbes list, is the CEO of the LVMH empire, which includes 70 fashion and cosmetics companies such as Louis Vuitton and Sephora. In January 2021, LVMH paid $15.8 billion for American jeweler Tiffany & Co, the largest luxury brand acquisition ever.
As Bernard Arnault has a net worth of around $188.9 billion. Elon Musk is the world’s richest person, with $176.8 billion, followed by Gautam Adani (No. 3, $133.7 billion) and Jeff Bezos (No. 4, $115.7 billion).
Warren Buffett is the world’s fifth richest individual, with a stunning $108.3 billion. Bill Gates came in sixth place with a personal fortune of $106.8 billion, followed by Larry Ellison, who had a fortune of $102.9 billion.
Mukesh Ambani is ranked eighth on the list, with a net worth of $92.2 billion. Larry Page ($83.0 billion) was ranked ninth on the list of the top ten richest persons in the world, followed by Steve Ballmer ($82.8 billion). Here is the newest list of the world’s top 25 richest folks.
