Elon Musk, once the richest man in the world with a valuation of $340 billion, recently lost this title to the 73-year-old Bernard Arnault, the CEO of fashion giant LVMH. Mr. Musk’s value of his EV brainchild, Tesla, saw a steep drop this year. According to Forbes, Mr. Musk’s current net worth is about $178bn, whereas Mr. Arnault stands at a valuation of $188 bn. Mr. Musk is the largest shareholder of Tesla and serves as its CEO. He owns 14% of the company. He completed a $44 billion buyout of the social media platform Twitter in October 2022. However, it is important to remember that the deal was not finalized until after months of legal struggle. Many have stated that his offer was excessive and could be the cause of the decline in Tesla stock.
But this isn’t the first time the frantic tycoon has fallen to the top of the list. Mr. Musk stunned the world with his pledge to take over Twitter back in September 2021, demonstrating how the richest people use their enormous wealth. The arrangement, however, ran counter to the Federal Reserve and other Central Banks’ most ferocious wave of monetary tightening in a generation, which caused a decline in the value of his Tesla’s shares. This year, the stock of the EV behemoth was brutally crushed by 50%.
Musk attempted to back out of the Twitter deal but was unsuccessful. In order to generate the necessary funds for the purchase, he had to sell billions of dollars’ worth of Tesla shares ($15 billion), which contributed to the shares’ decline. However, when the deal was finalized, the Bloomberg Wealth Index shaved $10 billion off his worth, reflecting the fact that shares of rival companies had fallen off since he had made his proposal. Even though he claims to turnaround Twitter, he is currently dealing with several difficulties, such as annual interest expenditures that are greater than the company’s projected earnings through 2021. Additionally, Mr. Musk threatened to block Twitter from the App Store at a time when businesses were already removing their advertising from the site.
However, in contrast to Mr. Musk, Mr. Arnault, the new richest man on earth, takes a less flamboyant stance. Although Mr. Arnault has consistently ranked among the wealthiest people, his wealth has never matched that of US tech billionaires. But while Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin of Alphabet Inc. are seeing their riches eroded by rising interest rates, he is currently revelling in the glory of his business.
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