Elon Musk loses $70 bln of his wealth, about to lose world’s ‎richest title ‎

The American electric car maker, Tesla, has lost nearly half of its market value since its founder, Elon Musk, made an offer to buy the social networking company, Twitter, last April, which led to a decline in his net worth by about $70 billion and put his title as the richest person in the world in danger.

Shares in the electric car company were trading at $340.79 on April 13, the day before Twitter disclosed the deal in Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory filings, and the billionaire had made an offer to buy the social media company for $43.4 billion. Since then, Tesla’s share price has fallen 49% to $173.44, also on concerns about unrest at one of its factories in Shanghai.

According to the British newspaper “The Guardian”, the head of Tesla sold $ 20 billion worth of shares in the automaker since April to finance the acquisition. Musk currently owns about 445 million shares, according to Reuters, and the drop in the share price reduced the value of that holding, from $151 billion to $77 billion. This means that his title as the richest person in the world is under threat, at a time when the French billionaire Bernard Arnault, CEO of the luxury “LVMH” group, has risen, as stock movements have led Arnault to occupy the lead for a short time.