Following further declines in the value of shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla, Elon Musk has lost the title of richest man in the world.
According to Forbes and Bloomberg, who track the wealth of billionaires, Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH in France, had surpassed Musk to claim the top spot.
South Africa-born Tesla’s CEO and largest shareholder, Musk, recently acquired ownership of Twitter. Since Musk’s initial bid for Twitter in April, the electric car manufacturer has seen its market value drop by more than 50 percent.
The day before Twitter revealed in a securities filing that the billionaire had made a hostile bid worth $43.4bn, shares of Tesla were trading at $340.79 (£275.27). The price of a Tesla share has dropped more than 50% since then, and it is currently trading at about $160.
According to Forbes, recent drops in the stock price of the automaker at the beginning of the week reduced Musk’s wealth by about $7 billion. In comparison to Arnault’s net worth of $188 billion, it estimates his current worth to be around $177 billion.
Due to share price changes, Arnault briefly surpassed Musk last week before the Tesla CEO reclaimed the top spot. Since April, Musk has sold $20 billion worth of Tesla stock to pay for his acquisition of Twitter.
Tesla’s stock price has been under pressure in part because of the company’s underwhelming quarterly results and worries about potential disruptions at one of its factories in Shanghai.
Investors are concerned that Musk may become preoccupied with his other endeavors, such as running Twitter and the rocket company SpaceX. In addition, he frequently draws flak for some of the contentious tweets he sends to his 121 million followers.
In recent days, when Musk joined comedian Dave Chappelle on stage in San Francisco, the audience booed him. Chappelle had introduced Musk with the line, “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world.”
