Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has officially been displaced as the world’s richest man as he currently sits in second position.
Forbes currently listed Musk as occupying the second position in its latest list of real-time billionaires with a net worth of $180 billion. The Twitter CEO was dethroned by French business magnate and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault who currently has an estimated net worth of US$208.1 billion as of March 2023.
It is interesting to note that Arnault was displaced from the top position by Musk last year and has once again regained his position, as both billionaires have often switched positions consecutively. The French billionaire has been a fixture near the top of the world’s wealthiest people rankings for years, even nabbing the top spot from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2021. The vast majority of Arnault’s wealth is tied to LVMH’s stock, and since 2020, the company’s stock price has grown by nearly 65% overall.
On the other hand, Musk’s decline in wealth has been attributed to his Twitter deal, in which he acquired the microblogging platform for a whopping $44 billion in October last year. The deal saw Musk offload more than $US15 billion in Tesla shares and about $US8.5 billion in April last year, then another $US6.9 billion in August same year, to raise enough cash to fund the purchase.
Investors King understands that Tesla investors expressed frustration with Musk’s sale of shares of the electric car company, amid growing concerns that the billionaire is focusing his attention on his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter to the detriment of his other business interests. This sent Tesla stocks declining sharply last year. Despite regaining much of its losses this year, the company shares are still trading lower.
Also, Musk seems not to be impressed by Twitter’s revenue, as of last month, he put the current value of the company at $20 billion, less than half the $44 billion he paid to acquire it five months. Musk described the brutal contraction in Twitter’s value, saying the platform faced grave financial difficulties that at one point was on the verge of bankruptcy. He however revealed to employees that he sees a clear but difficult path to a valuation of $250 billion, without specifying how long that might take.