Dropping to Number Two
Elon Musk briefly loses title of world's richest person
The wealth of Twitter CEO Elon Musk played ping-pong on Wednesday, causing Forbes to report that he had briefly lost the title of the world's richest person.
While Musk had previously been securely on the top of the list, his recent controversies and $44 billion bet on Twitter have caused his net worth to fluctuate. As a result, Forbes reported that Musk was overtaken as the world's richest person on Wednesday morning by Bernard Arnault. The Frenchman is the owner of LVMH, a conglomerate known for luxury subsidiaries like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Hennessy, and Bulgari.
However, by the afternoon, Musk had reclaimed the title, only to be dethroned again by Arnault minutes later. As of the time of market closings at 4 p.m. ET, Forbes reported that Musk had regained the wealthiest man title, being worth $185.4 billion to Arnault's $184.7 billion.
With the two men's net worths being so close, though, the outlet said that it "won't be surprising if they continue to flip flop in Forbes' rankings of the world's wealthiest."
The fact that Arnault has now caught up to Musk is a large development for the tech mogul, who earlier this year was reported to be worth more than $270 billion. However, a number of changes made by Musk at Twitter seemed to cause the market to lose confidence in the company, and Musk has said Twitter could even be facing bankruptcy. Forbes also noted that shares of Tesla, the car brand that first made Musk his sizable wealth, are down 50 percent on the year.