His shares in Tesla and SpaceX have already brought Elon Musk a number of highlights: Among other things, in 2021 he became the second person after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to own more than 200 billion dollars. Thanks to the run on his company, that was not the end of it; by the end of 2021, he was the first person in history to be more than $300 billion rich.
The crash started a little later: In an already turbulent stock market year 2022, Musk then surprisingly announced the purchase of Twitter, tried to wriggle out of the signed contracts and finally agreed to the purchase without a court case.
The pending sales process and Musk’s subsequent escapades on Twitter also affected his other companies: Tesla fell from a high of $353.60 to $103.12, destroying a good two-thirds of the market value over the year.
This now also has consequences for Musk himself: Instead of being the richest man in the world, he now only started the new year in second place. Worse still, according to Bloomberg, he snagged a questionable record of becoming the first person ever to lose more than $200 billion in wealth.
For comparison: According to the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index”, Musk is currently worth 137 billion dollars, which is enough for second place on the list of the richest people in the world behind LVMH boss (including Louis Vuitton, Moët, Henessy) Bernard Arnault. However, at its peak in November 2021, Musk’s net worth was $340 billion.
However, it is unclear how long he will have to be angry about his negative record: Although Tesla lost more than a third of its market value in December, the share was able to close significantly more positively in the last week of December.
Sources: Bloomberg, CNN
