Elon Musk Drops to Second Wealthiest Person as Tesla’s Stock Falls Sharply

Due to a sharp drop in Tesla’s stock price, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has handed over the title of the world’s richest person to Bernard Arnault, the chairman of the French luxury goods company LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), according to a report by the American economic medium Forbes on the 26th (local time).

According to the real-time global wealth list compiled by Forbes, Chairman Arnault’s net worth recorded $207.6 billion as of that day. Musk, who had been maintaining first place in world wealth, recorded a net worth of $204.7 billion, falling second to Chairman Arnault.

This is due to the recent sharp drop in Tesla’s stock price. Last week, Tesla’s performance announcement fell by over 13% in the past week amid poor performance last year and a bleak outlook for this year. In addition, Tesla has dropped more than 26% this year alone amid a series of bad news, including a dim outlook for the electric vehicle industry, a large-scale recall in China, and news of Musk’s drug use.

On the other hand, LVMH’s stock price surged by more than 17% last week following a positive performance announcement for the previous year and a positive outlook for this year, mainly attributed to the Paris Olympics. The stock price has also risen by more than 5% this year.

According to Forbes, following Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($181.3 billion), Oracle founder Larry Ellison ($142.2 billion), and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg ($139.1 billion) ranked 3rd to 5th in the world’s wealthiest, respectively. “Investment genius” Warren Buffett ranked 6th with $127.2 billion, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates ranked 8th with $122.9 billion.

In Asia, Zhong Shanshan, the chairman of the Chinese bottled water company Nongfu Spring, ranked the highest at 22nd place ($61.3 billion), and Jensen Huang, CEO of the leading AI semiconductor company Nvidia, ranked 24th with $52.43 billion.

In South Korea, Lee Jae Yong, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, ranked the highest at 210th place with a net worth of approximately $9.8 billion.