Elon Musk at Heidi Klum's 21st Annual Halloween Party on 31 October 2022, in New York City. Photo: Getty Images/AFP/Noam Galai
Elon Musk regained his title of the World’s richest person on Monday, after overtaking luxury mogul Bernard Arnault.
This means Jeff Bezos was pushed down one place and is now the world’s third-richest person.
The boost to his wealth is attributed to a surge in Tesla shares. Musk currently has a net worth of $187.1 billion (approximately R3.4 trillion).
Tesla stocks declined rapidly last year, when Musk acquired Twitter and was exacerbated by a downturn in the global electric vehicle market.
The Twitter acquisition cost Musk more than $44 billion, and he needed a $15 billion boost from his Tesla stock to complete the takeover.
At the time of publishing, Tesla stocks are worth $169, which is an increase of nearly 14%.
Musk also won a federal civil trial earlier this month, over funding he secured from Tesla’s board of directors in 2018.
The compensation grant was the largest package from a publicly traded company in history, and Tesla was taken to court for “failing to perform its fiduciary duty to investors by green-lighting” the payout.
To receive the package, which consisted of 12 batches of stock, Musk had to reach Tesla’s market capitalisation and earned revenue milestones.
This pay deal made Musk the richest man in the history of the world.
ALSO READ: ‘Please love me’ – Yes, Elon Musk used Twitter to force-feed us his tweets
Arnault – who took the title from Musk in December 2022 – is currently the world’s second richest person with $185 billion.
As per Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker, Jeff Bezos is the world’s third-richest person with $117 billion, while business magnates Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett have $113 billion and $106 billion, respectively.
Unfortunately for Musk, he still also holds the record for the biggest fortune ever lost by one person in the history of the world – R13.5 billion (approximately R200 billion) in 2022.
NOW READ: ‘I bought Twitter to help humanity’, says Musk while passing ads as content
“I operate on the physics approach to analysis. You boil things down to the first principles or fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there,” – Forbes quoting Elon Musk.