Following further declines in the value of shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla, Elon Musk has lost the title of the richest man in the world.
According to Forbes and Bloomberg, which track the wealth of billionaires, Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the luxury conglomerate LVMH in France, had surpassed Musk to claim the top spot.
Arnault’s fortune is now estimated at $171 billion, compared to $164 billion for Elon Musk, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk recently took ownership of the social media platform Twitter. Since his initial bid for Twitter in April, the electric car manufacturer has seen its market value drop by more than 50 percent.
Read more: Elon Musk sells an additional $3.95 bn of Tesla shares
The day before Twitter revealed in a securities filing that the billionaire had made a bid worth $43.4 billion, shares of Tesla were trading at $340.79. The price of a Tesla share has dropped more than 50 percent since then, and it is currently trading at about $160.
Due to share price changes, Arnault briefly surpassed Musk last week before the Tesla CEO reclaimed the top spot. Since April, Musk has sold about $20 billion worth of Tesla stock to pay for his acquisition of Twitter.
Tesla’s stock price has been under pressure in part because of the company’s underwhelming quarterly results and worries about potential disruptions at one of its factories in Shanghai.
