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Elon Musk on a visit to Germany: The Tesla boss is profiting from the price rally for Tesla shares.
Photo: ALEXANDER BECHER / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
The shares of the electric car manufacturer Tesla gained around 700 percent last year, and this year they are also in demand on the stock market.
Now Tesla’s breathtaking rally has made company boss Elon Musk the richest person in the world according to the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” billionaire ranking.
The fortune of the 49-year-old star entrepreneur rose to 188.5 billion dollars on Thursday thanks to further price gains in Tesla shares, and was thus around 1.5 billion more than that of Amazon founder and previous frontrunner Jeff Bezos.
Both Musk and Bezos, who has held the top position in Bloomberg's super-rich charts since October 2017, as major shareholders of their companies benefit greatly from their good performance on the stock exchange.
Tesla's stock is up more than 700 percent in the past twelve months.
Despite still very little production and only modest profits, the company has long been by far the most highly traded car manufacturer in the world.
It was only in November that Musk overtook third-placed Bill Gates in the Bloomberg ranking.
The figures in billionaire charts like the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index" or the "Forbes" lists are not exactly determined values, but estimates based on publicly available information about assets such as stocks, real estate, works of art and other luxury goods based.
In the "Forbes Billionaires List" Musk ranked second with a fortune of 173.2 billion dollars - well behind Bezos, who brought it there to 185.9 billion.
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mic / dpa
