Twitter owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk briefly lost his title as the world’s richest person on Wednesday, according to Forbes, following a steep drop in the value of his stake in the electric-car maker and a $US44 billion ($65 billion) bet on the social media firm.
Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH, and his family briefly took the title as the world’s richest, but were back at No. 2 with a personal wealth of $US185.3 billion, according to Forbes.
Elon Musk has been on top of the Forbes rich list since September 2021.Credit:Bloomberg
Musk, who has held the top spot on the Forbes list since September 2021, has a net worth of $US185.7 billion in late trade on Wall Street. Musk took over the title from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Tesla shares, which have lost more than 47 per cent in value since Musk made his offer to buy Twitter earlier this year, were down 2.8 per cent in late Wall Street trade.
Musk’s net worth dropped below $US200 billion earlier on November 8 as investors dumped Tesla’s shares on worries the top executive and largest shareholder of the world’s most valuable electric-vehicle maker is more preoccupied with Twitter.
Tesla has lost nearly half its market value and Musk’s net worth has dropped by about $US70 billion since he bid for Twitter in April. Musk closed the deal for Twitter in October with $US13 billion in loans and a $US33.5 billion equity commitment. Musk has sold at least $US36 billion of his own Tesla shares to fund the buyout.
LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, with wife briefly regained his crown as the richest person in the world. Credit:AP
Besides Tesla, Musk also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.
Tesla shares have been hit by a broader slump in technology stocks, supply-chain snarls, rising raw-material costs and lockdowns in China. But there’s no doubt the Twitter deal and Musk’s subsequent share sales have added to the downdraft: Tesla tumbled after he initially disclosed his plan to buy Twitter, and the post-acquisition selloff at one point pushed the stock to its lowest level since November 2020.
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