By Aaron Miller-
Elon Musk has been overtaken as the world’s richest man, following a sharp decline in the value of his shares in electric car company Tesla this year.
Mr Musk lost the top spot by Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury goods group LVMH.
The chief executive and the largest shareholder in Tesla, with a reported stake of about 14% who completed a $44bn takeover of social network Twitter in October, but is now dwarfed by Arnault controls about 60pc of the Louis Vuitton group through direct holdings and family trusts.
Since Mr Musk completed the Twitter buyout Tesla’s stock has dropped 25pc in price. It makes up a substantial amount of Mr Musk’s wealth, as he owns around 14pc of the $525bn (£428bn) electric vehicle business.
In November, it was revealed that the Tesla boss had sold $3.95bn of shares in his company to help finance the Twitter acquisition.
Investors fear Musk’s preoccupation with Twitter has taken his focus away from Tesla and his other businesses, driving down the value of their holdings which has fallen from a trade price of $39 to $167, despite fending off established rivals such as Ford and challengers such as China’s BYD.
Two years ago Tesla shares were trading at around $30. Its meteoric rise and fall during the Covid-19 pandemic tracked the broader tech markets and saw its valuation briefly break the $1 trillion mark late last year.
Lockdowns at Tesla’s Shanghai factory have hit the company hard this year, with sales and deliveries sometimes failing to keep pace with market expectations.
Musk also dismissed Twitter’s trust and safety council, a group of human rights organisations set up to advise the social network on removing hate speech.
The council had been due to convene on Monday, but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute. Around the time of the planned meeting, Mr Musk Tweeted: “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.”.
After building a stake in Twitter at the start of the year, Mr Musk made his $44bn offer in April, withdrawing from the deal, citing concerns over the number of fake accounts on the platform.
Eventually Twitter executives took legal action to hold Mr Musk to his offer.
The news of Musk’s drop in wealth follows revelations that than 30 million users are expected to leave Twitter over the next two years as concerns mount over technical issues and the proliferation of offensive content after Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover, according to a forecast.