Musk, who became the richest person in the world on Friday according to Forbes, loses that position later … [+]
Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
After a brief stint as the richest person on the planet, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is once again the second richest person in the world after his fortune fell by nearly $ 14 billion in one day.
Shares of its electric vehicle maker Tesla fell nearly 8 percent on Monday, bringing Musk’s net worth down $ 13.5 billion to $ 176.2 billion. After briefly overtaking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world last Friday, Musk fell back to second place, according to Forbesestimates.
It now has about $ 6 billion behind Bezos, which has a net worth of $ 182.1 billion. Shares of Amazon fell more than 2% on Monday, lowering Bezos ’net worth by $ 3.6 billion.
Throughout 2020, Musk received several tranche of options worth billions of dollars each, as Tesla achieved several market capitalization and EBITDA targets. Tesla’s board of directors certifies the award of each tranche and then issues a statement in a regulatory dossier to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk appears to be eligible for another 8.44 million tranche of options (worth about $ 6.25 billion at Monday’s closing price), but Forbes it has not yet attributed these options to Musk because the board has not publicly certified them. (Bloomberg seems to count the last stretch of Musk options in its Musk equity calculations.)
Driven by Tesla’s share price, Musk’s fortune has risen by about $ 150 billion since March 2020, when it was worth $ 24.6 billion. Tesla shares rose more than 720% in 2020 and already gained another 12% in the first week of 2021. Tesla joined the S&P 500 index in late December 2020, a move that also boosted actions. Tesla, the world’s most valuable carmaker, produced half a million cars by 2020, a fraction of the production of global giants like GM and Toyota.
Despite the fall of Musk on Monday, he is still about $ 20 billion richer than the third richest person in the world, luxury French mogul Bernard Arnault (worth $ 154.6 billion today).