Elon Musk briefly overthrown as richest person in the world after buying Twitter
7 December 2022, 23:16
Elon Musk was overthrown as the richest person in the world weeks after buying Twitter.
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The Tesla boss briefly lost his title on Wednesday, after his fortune dipped to $185.3 billion, according to Forbes.
He fell just behind the $185.4 billion personal wealth of Bernard Arnault - the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, and his family.
It was the first time since September 2021 that Musk was knocked out of first place on the Forbes' Real Time Billionaires list - a title he took from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
However, he quickly returned to the top spot, with him and Arnault fighting to lead throughout the trading day.
Read more: Elon Musk scraps Twitter's misinformation policy in latest U-turn following takeover
Tesla shares, which have lost more than 47% in value since Musk made his offer to buy Twitter earlier this year, were down 2.7%.
It came after Musk's net worth dropped below $200 billion earlier on November 8 as investors dumped Tesla's shares amid concerns the executive - and largest shareholder of the world's most valuable electric-vehicle maker - was more preoccupied with Twitter.
Tesla has lost nearly half its market value and Musk's net worth has dropped by about $70 billion since he bid for Twitter in April.
Musk closed the deal for Twitter in October with $13 billion in loans and a $33.5 billion equity commitment.
Besides Tesla, he also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.
Forbes' Real Time Billionaires list:
1. Elon Musk - $185.4B
2. Bernard Arnault and family - $184.7B
3. Gautam Adani - $134.8B
4. Jeff Bezos - $111.8B
5. Warren Buffett - $105.9B
6. Bill Gates - $105.3B
7. Larry Ellison - $101.5B
8. Mukesh Ambani - $93.3B
9. Larry Page - $82.5B
10. Carlos Slim Helu & family - $82.4B
11. Steve Ballmer - $79.7B
12. Sergey Brin - $79.1B
13. Michael Bloomberg - $76.8B
14. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers & family - $75.2B
15. Zhong Shanshan - $67.3B
16. Jim Walton - $63.3B
17. Amancio Ortega - $63.1B
18. Rob Walton - $61.9B
19. Alice Walton - $61B
20. Charles Koch - $58B
