Elon Musk is no longer the richest man in the world after a sharp decline in the value of his shares in the electric car company Tesla this year. According to Forbes and Bloomberg, Musk was passed for the top spot by Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods group LVMH.
According to Forbes, Musk is now worth around $178bn (£152bn). Meanwhile, Bernard Arnault is worth $188 billion. Musk’s Twitter deal was completed only after months of legal wrangling, with some citing the distraction from the takeover as one of the factors behind Tesla’s stock price crash. After acquiring a stake in Twitter earlier this year, Musk made his $44 billion offer in April, though this offer was considered by many to be too high.
In July, it pulled out of the deal, citing concerns about the number of fake accounts on the platform. Eventually, Twitter executives took legal action to force Musk to honor their offer. Dan Ives of investment firm Wedbush Securities said the “circus” surrounding the Twitter deal weighed on Tesla’s stock price. “Musk has gone from being a superhero in the shares of Tesla to a villain in the eyes of the street, as the projection grows with each tweet,” he told the BBC.
Musk and Tesla stock
“Twitter’s circus show has damaged the Musk brand and is a gross excess of Tesla stock. Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk.”
- Musk sold billion of dollar worth of Tesla stock to fund his purchase, helping to drive the stock down.
- Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla, with a reported stake of approximately 14%.
- In October, he completed a $44 billion acquisition of the social network Twitter.
Investors also worry that demand for the company’s electric cars could decline as the economy weakens; higher borrowing costs deter buyers, and other companies ramp up their EV offerings. Tesla has also been hit with recalls, as well as government investigations into the crashes and its Autopilot feature.
