Elon Musk isn’t the richest person on the planet for the first time in over nine months. Musk lost his top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to Jeff Bezos following Monday’s 7.2% decline in Tesla Inc. shares. Bezos is worth $200.3 billion, while Musk is currently worth $197.7 billion.
Since 2021, Bezos, the 60-year-old founder of Amazon.com Inc., has not finished first on Bloomberg’s list of the richest people.
As Amazon and Tesla shares move in opposite directions, the wealth disparity between Musk, 52, and Bezos, who once had a net worth of $142 billion, has been closing. Amazon shares have more than doubled since late 2022 and are very close to reaching a record high, even though both are part of the renowned Magnificent Seven stocks that have driven US equity markets. From its 2021 peak, Tesla has dropped by roughly 50%.
Monday saw a decline in Tesla stock as initial data indicated that shipments from the company’s Shanghai factory fell to levels not seen in more than a year. Conversely, Amazon has just experienced its greatest increase in online sales since the beginning of the pandemic.
Musk’s wealth could take a further hit after a Delaware judge struck down his $55 billion pay package at Tesla, where he’s chief executive. The decision took the side of an investor who’d challenged Musk’s compensation plan, which had been the largest in history.
Options that were included in the voided plan are one of Musk’s largest assets, alongside his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. The Bloomberg index continues to include them in its calculations of his wealth.
The vast majority of Bezos’s fortune comes from his 9% stake in Amazon. He’s the online retailer’s largest shareholder, even after unloading 50 million shares worth about $8.5 billion last month.
For Bezos, the top spot in the wealth rankings is a comfortable one. In 2017, he first surpassed Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Inc., to become the richest person in the world.
However, a sharp increase in Tesla’s stock price left Bezos and Musk vying for the top spot for the majority of 2021. He fell far behind by the end of that year and hasn’t reclaimed the top spot until now.
With a net worth of $197.5 billion, 74-year-old Bernard Arnault is the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the biggest luxury goods manufacturer in the world. He is also one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
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