Musk is now world’s second richest man: This man is first

New Delhi, Dec 14: Elon Musk is now the world's second richest man. He has been displaced as the world's richest man by Bernard Arnault.

The 51 year old Musk has seen his fortune tumble by over $100 billion since January to $168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As on 10.20 am New York time, that is less than $179 billion net worth of Arnault (73) who largely derives that wealth from his 48 per cent ownership of fashion giant LVMH.

Musk's fall from the top ranking happened for the first time win September 2021. This April he shocked the world with his offer to take Twitter private for $44 billion, in a brazen display of how the wealthiest individuals could use their huge fortunes.

However his agreement coincided with the Federal Reserve and other central banks embarking on their most aggressive round of monetary tightening in a generation. Musk had for a month tried to get out of the Twitter deal, but failed to do so. He offloaded over $15 billion in Tesla shares. He offloaded $8.5 billion in April and another $6 billion in August to raise funds for the purchase.

The Bloomberg wealth index knocked $10 billion from his fortune once he finalised Twitter. This reflected that the shares of similar businesses have slipped since he made the bid.

Musk has pledged that he would turn around the social-media platform, but he faces many challenges. Meanwhile, Twitter is poised to face the annual interest costs that exceeded a measure of its earnings for all of 2021 and Musk's bankers are considering providing him with new margin loans which are backed by Tesla stock to replace some of the high-interest debt he layered on Twitter, Bloomberg News reported.

Arnault on the other hand has been a mainstay where the top rankings are concerned. However his fortunes never grew at an exponential pace of the US tech billionaires.

The Paris based LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vitton's designer appeared, fine wines and retail business have benefited from pent-up demand which was unleashed after COVID-19 related shopping and travel restrictions were lifted in most countries.