Billionaire Elon Musk buys off Twitter

Tesla and twitter boss, Elon Musk,  has been dethroned from the top of Forbes’ annual “World’s Billionaire’s List.”

He now ranks second after Bernard Arnault, the chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH.

Musk worth is now estimated at $180 billion (around Ksh.23.9 trillion), which is $39 billion (approx. Ksh.5.2 trillion) less than the previous year while that of Arnault increased more than $50 billion (around Ksh.6.7 trillion) in the past year to $211 billion (around Ksh.28.1 trillion).

According to Forbes, the drop in Musk’s wealth is largely attributed to the $44 billion (approx. Ksh.5.9 trillion) Twitter purchase, funded by Tesla shares, which scared investors and led to a sharp drop in Tesla’s stock last year.

Even though Tesla has presently gained much of those losses back this year,  the rate still remains significantly lower than prior to Musk buying Twitter.

Musk is however not the only billionaire who dropped his earlier position on Forbes’ World Billionaires List; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos actually lost the most amount of money of all billionaires on the list with $57 billion (approx. Ksh.18.6 trillion), knocking him down from second position to third.

Bezos loss, according to Forbes can be attributed to Amazon shares losing nearly 40% of their value last year.

Bernard Arnault, the world’s top billionaire, had a good year, gaining the most on the list owing to increased profits from his luxury conglomerate, which comprises Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co. Shares of LVMH increased by 25% over the past year.

Other billionaires who ranked among the top 10 on Forbe’s world billionaires list include;

Fall from Glory

The number of billionaires on Forbes have been on the decline for two years now with the entity recording that this year, the number of billionaires dropped to 2,640 down from 2,668 last year.

More than 250 people who featured on last year’s list didn’t make a cut on this year’s list of wold billionaires. These  include Kanye West, who lost his Adidas deal, and embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who lost 94% of his wealth in one day.

“It’s been another rare down year for the planet’s richest people,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes senior editor of wealth, in a release. “Nearly half the list is poorer than they were 12 months ago, but a lucky few are billions — or even tens of billions — of dollars richer.”