Guinness World Records has confirmed that tech billionaire, Elon Musk’s spectacular crash in net worth, last month, during which he lost his title as world’s richest man last month, has been the “worst loss of fortune in history.”
Guinness, citing Forbes data, said Musk lost about $182 billion between November 2021 and early this month. Data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows him losing $200 billion in roughly that same period. That is a record-breaking loss, according to Guinness, which said in a blog post that the previous record was set during the tech-stock crash of 2000, when Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, reportedly lost $58.6 billion. That would be about $100 billion today, accounting for inflation. Musk’s loss comes amid the fallout from his $44billion purchase of Twitter, where he has laid off thousands of workers while wading into thorny political debates. Investors in Tesla, the electric-car maker Musk runs, have voiced concerns that he is spending so much time trying to right the ship at Twitter that Tesla is suffering. Tesla stock has lost 39 per cent of its value since December 1, according to to Bloomberg News.
Elon Musk’s role at Tesla questioned as Twitter occupies his attention Measuring individuals’ net worth at a given point in time is tricky business. Entrepreneurs whose net worth is tied up in the value of a particular stock can see huge fluctuations within short time frames because of external factors such as market conditions or government policy. Musk has in the past lost significant amounts of money before recovering and regrowing his net worth. But this crisis is in part of Musk’s own making. He sold significant amounts of his Tesla shares to purchase Twitter at a premium, just as the carmaker is suffering from increased competition in the electric-vehicle market, shortages of chips and raw materials, and production delays and missed deadlines. Meanwhile, Musk has said he will sleep at Twitter’s San Francisco office “until the org is fixed.”
Frustrations with Musk have bubbled over into shareholder lawsuits against Tesla, including one filed in 2018in Delaware that claims a pay package he secured was excessive and alleges Tesla’s board members did not act independently in approving it. Battle to dethrone Tesla heats up just as Musk is distracted by Twitter. According to Bloomberg News, SpaceX, Musk’s space manufacturing company, accounts for more than 37 per cent of his net worth, and shares in the publicly traded Tesla account for about 33 per cent. The rest is made up of shares in Twitter and the Boring Company, the firm Musk created to build tunnels with the goal of relieving urban traffic. The recent drop in Musk’s net worth has largely been due to the plummeting value of Tesla stock. Musk has repeatedly attributed this to macroeconomic trends, including the Federal Reserve’s historically high 2022 interest rates .
