Elon Musk Loses ‘World’s Richest Person’ Title To LVMH Mogul Bernard Arnault

The two magnates each have an estimated net worth of $185 billion.

Twitter owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk briefly lost his title of world’s richest person on Wednesday after a plunge in the value of his stake in the electric carmaker and his controversial, $44 billion purchase of the social media site.

Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH, briefly snatched the title of world’s richest person before falling back to No. 2 with a personal wealth of $185.3 billion, according to Forbes.

LVMH’s sales and profits have soared 500 percent under Arnault’s leadership, and the company now has over 70 fashion and beauty titles in its luxe portfolio. In January 2021, LVMH-acquired jeweler Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion, believed to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.

Arnault controls about half of LVMH, and its fashion brands include Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loewe, Loro Piana, Kenzo, Celine, Sephora, Princess Yachts, TAG Heuer watches, Bulgari and Tiffany & Co.

Musk, who has held the top spot on the Forbes list since September 2021, has an estimated net worth of $185.7 billion. Musk previously seized the world’s richest person title from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Tesla shares, which have lost more than 47 percent in value since Musk made his offer to buy Twitter earlier this year, were down 2.7 percent, according to Forbes.

Musk’s net worth dropped below $200 billion earlier on November 8 as investors dumped Tesla’s shares, reportedly after widespread worries that the boss and biggest shareholder of the world’s most valuable electric carmaker has recently been preoccupied with running Twitter.

Musk recently made headlines for suspending Kanye West’s Twitter account after the troubled rap mogul–now known as Ye–shared an anti-semitic tweet.

Tesla has reportedly lost nearly half its market value and Musk’s net worth has dropped by about $70 billion since he bid for Twitter in April.

Besides Tesla, Musk also runs rocket firm SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing futuristic brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.