With his net worth at one point calculated to be $340 billion, Elon Musk saw his fortunes fade in real time by more than $100 billion after he pledged to buy Twitter for $44 billion, giving the title of World’s Richest Person to Frenchman Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, Bloomberg reports.
Currently worth a comparatively paultry $168 billion, Musk put up approximately $8.5 billion of his own money to facilitate the purchase of Twitter to take it private, using money from Saudis and others financing the rest. The biggest hit to his wealth, however, is the plummeting price of Tesla stock: when Musk impetuously offered to buy Twitter for around $54 per share in April, Tesla stock was sitting well above $300 per share; as of 11:00 a.m. ET Tuesday, it’s at $162, less than half its early April price. As of November 1st, Musk owned more than 190 million shares of Tesla. Tesla’s stock dip allowed Arnault to take bragging rights thanks to his net worth of approximately $180 billion.
Tesla stockholders have questioned Musk’s management of the Twitter takeover, with some objecting to Musk’s reported use of Tesla technical personnel to undertake projects at Twitter, whose staff Musk impulsively decimated, firing thousands of employees before trying to rehire some of them because he realized they were vital to the operation of the company.