Tesla CEO Elon Musk is no longer the richest person in the world after he lost this position in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a position now occupied by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. The replacement comes after the automobile company’s shares fell 7.2% yesterday.
According to the index, Musk has a net worth of $197.7 billion, while Bezos’s reaches $200.3 billion. This is not the first time that the founder of the e-commerce and cloud computing services corporation tops the ranking, since in 2017 his wealth surpassed that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
The wealth gap between Musk and Bezos, which once reached $142 billion, has been narrowing as Amazon and Tesla shares have moved in opposite directions. Although the two companies are part of the Magnificent Seven that have boosted the US stock markets, the shares of the e-commerce giant are within striking distance of breaking their all-time high, having appreciated more than 60% since May 2022, thanks in large part to the good performance of its online sales. On the other hand, Tesla shares have lost half their value since November 2021. A trend that could worsen after learning of the decline in shipments from its Shanghai factory, which have fallen to their lowest level in more than a year.
Musk’s wealth could continue to decline after a judge in Delaware, in the United States, annulled the $56 billion salary package he received in 2018 in compensation to continue managing Tesla, an amount that the index of Bloomberg continues to include it in its calculation. The ruling agrees with an investor who had questioned Musk’s compensation plan, the largest in the history of the automobile company.
For his part, the majority of Bezos’ fortune comes from his 9% stake in Amazon, where he is the largest shareholder, despite recently offloading 50 million shares worth about $8.5 billion.
