Tesla Founder and CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, has lost his title as the richest man in the world to French businessman Benard Arnault, the owner of fashion giant LVMH.
This followed a 50% drop in Tesla’s stock. Elon Musk’s wealth, mostly tied to Tesla stock, was propelled by a meteoric rise in the electric carmaker’s share price, which rocketed more than 1,000% in two years.
The Tesla CEO’s wealth has now been cut in half from its $340 billion peak, partly due to his recent purchase of the microblogging site Twitter.
Richest man no more: Elon Musk held the title of the world’s richest man since September 2021, when he overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Tesla has lost nearly half its market value since its founder, Elon Musk, bid for Twitter in April, reducing his net worth by about $70bn and putting his title as the world’s richest person at risk.
The electric car maker’s shares traded at $340.79 on 13 April, the day before Twitter revealed in a regulatory filing that the billionaire had made a hostile bid to buy the social media company for $44 billion.
Impact of Twitter deal: Musk tried for months to get out of the Twitter deal but failed. He then offloaded more than $15 billion in Tesla shares about $8.5 billion in April, then another $6.9 billion in August to raise enough cash to fund the purchase.
Once he finalized the Twitter acquisition in October, the Bloomberg wealth index knocked $10 billion from his fortune, reflecting that shares of similar businesses have slumped since he made his bid.
Arnault’s Wealth: Arnault, through holding vehicles and family trusts, owns a little over 60% of LVMH’s voting share class, according to SEC filings. Arnault is worth $167 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
