Elon Musk briefly drops to No 2 richest man, rebounces

Elon Musk on Wednesday briefly lost his position as the richest person in the world to Chief Executive Officer of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, whose family owns luxury brand Louis Vuitton.

According to Forbes, at 3:30 pm ET on Wednesday Arnault overtook Musk to become the world’s richest person with an estimated $184.7bn but when US markets closed at 4pm ET Musk was back on top with $185.4bn.

On September 27, 2021, Musk overtook Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person for the first time.

Bezos has since dropped to fourth place with $111.3bn while Indian businessman Gautam Adani sits in third place with $134.8bn.

Musk’s major source of wealth is Tesla whose shares peaked at $320bn in November 2021, after car rental giant Hertz announced a large order from the electric vehicle maker.

But in 2022, Tesla shares are down by nearly 50 per cent.

Also in October 2022, the billionaire acquired social media platform Twitter, for $44bn.