Elon Musk loses rank as world’s richest person two days after reclaiming it from LVMH’s Bernard Arnault

Billionaire lost title last year as Tesla shares dipped

Elon Musk has once again lost his spot as world’s richest person to French billionaire Bernard Arnault of the luxury congolmerate LVMH.

Earlier this week, the Tesla and Twitter boss briefly retook the number one spot on the global wealth pyramid, with his net worth reaching an estimated $187.1bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

However, as Fortune reports, shares of Tesla fell by more than 5 per cent on Wednesday, causing Mr Musk’s net worth to drop by nearly $2bn and allowing the Frenchman to reclaim the top spot.

It’s all a bit of déjà vu for Mr Musk.

Last year, the Tesla co-founder briefly lost the top rank to Mr Arnault, as shares in the automaker declined last winter.

However, until Wall Street appeared unimpressed by Tesla’s 2023 Investor Day this week, the copmany was on a roll.

Since 6 January this year, Tesla stock had climbed 100 per cent, driven by increased investor demand, customer interest in recently discounted Tesla models, and a better economic forecast, according to Bloomberg.

As recently as December, things looked very different for Mr Musk.

Between November 2021 and December 2022, the Twitter owner’s net worth fell by over $200bn, one of the largest losses of wealth in recent history.

That sum is equivalent to the GDP of Greece, and was greater than the entire net worth of the world’s next-richest man at the time, Mr Arnault.

The sudden collapse was driven by the rapid decline in the value of Tesla stock at that time.

Last year marked the company’s worst year ever on Wall Street, losing $700bn amid investor fears about the impact of Covid in China and Mr Musk’s controversial takeover of Twitter.

Mr Musk himself has made light of his at times chaotic finances.

Last week, he joked that after his contentious takeover of Twitter in 2022, he had spent $44bn to acquire “the world’s largest non-profit.”

In November, Mr Musk said Twitter was losing $4m a day.

The billionaire has also presided over deep layoffs at the social company, which has slashed its workforce nearly 75 per cent, from 7,500 employees down to about 2,000 in recent months.

That hasn’t stopped Mr Musk from appearing to mock his own recently fired colleagues.

On Sunday, he appeard to make a joke about another 200 employees who were reportedly let go.

“Hope you have a good Sunday. First day of the rest of your life,” he wrote on Twitter.