Elon Musk no longer world’s richest man

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has lost his title of world’s richest man after a sharp drop in the value of his shares in the car company Tesla.

Both Forbes and Bloomberg says Mr Musk has lost the top spot to Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury goods group LVMH.

Musk has the largest shareholder in Tesla, with a reported 14% stake.

His controversial takeover of Twitter was completed in October for a reported $44bn.

Fornes says Musk is now worth about $178bn whilst Bernard Arnault has a value of $188bn.

Musk’s Twitter deal was completed after months of legal wrangling and some believe the distraction of the messy takeover as a factor behind Tesla’s share price fall.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

At the start of the year, he made a $44bn offer for the social media site, but many considered this figure to be too high.

In July he pulled out of the deal over concerns about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. The company executives took legal action to hold Mr Musk to his offer. The Twitter deal eventually went through, but did not involve the courts.

Dan Ives from investment firm Wedbush Securities said the “circus” surrounding the Twitter deal has weighed on Tesla’s share price.

“Musk has gone from a superhero to Tesla’s stock, to a villain in the eyes of the Street, as the overhang grows with each tweet,” he told the BBC.

“The Twitter circus show has hurt the Musk brand and it’s a major overhang on Tesla’s stock. Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk.”

Sold shares to buy Twitter

Musk had sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to help fund his purchase, which helped pushed the shares down.

The demand for electric cars is also slow due to the economy being weaker. Investors say higher borrowing costs discourage buyers. Tesla has also suffered from recalls as well as government probes of crashes and its autopilot feature – all of which do not give customers confidence.