Secondly, and by a wide margin from the first, now Elon Musk has dropped down in the list of the richest people in the world, annually compiled by the authoritative American magazine Forbes.

According to the magazine, the super-rich owner of Tesla and Twitter, among many others, has seen his personal fortune dwindle by $39 billion in a year, and is now “depleted” with “only” $180 billion.

That decouples him from the top spot on the world list, which now features French tycoon Bernard Arnault, who temporarily appeared a few months ago in the magazine’s preliminary rankings.

The owner of French luxury giant LVMH (Louis Vuitton) is now worth $211 billion, more than $30 billion more than Musk. In a year, Mr. Arno’s fortune increased by more than $50 billion.

In order of magnitude, the wealth of the luxury magnate is about 8-10% higher than the annual gross national product of all of Greece.

As Forbes explains, Mr. Musk’s fortune has dwindled as his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, funded by Tesla stock, spooked investors and sent Tesla shares plummeting last year. Tesla has recouped many of those losses this year, but it’s still significantly less than it was before Mr. Musk acquired Twitter.

But Greek-born Amazon owner Jeff Bezos has suffered an even bigger loss: over the past year, his fortune has shrunk by $57 billion, the biggest loss of any billionaire on the list, so he dropped to third place in the rankings. .

Bad news

But the bad news for the rich doesn’t end there. The magazine points to a decline in the number of billionaires worldwide (in dollar terms) as the total number of billionaires on this year’s list fell to 2,640 (from 2,668), marking a second straight year of decline.

“This has been another extraordinary year for the richest people in the world,” said Chase Peterson-Whithorn, managing editor of Forbes. tens of billions are richer.”

Source: CNN