Electric cars may be the future, but right now they are showing signs of weakness.
The value of Tesla's shares has halved so far in 2022. So much so that its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, has ceased to be the richest man in the world, giving up his position to the president and director executive of the luxury conglomerate LVMH, of French Bernard Arnault and his family, according to
Forbes
magazine .
The shares of the electric vehicle company – which this Monday, December 12, closed the day with a drop of 6.27% – have plummeted in recent months, partly due to a liquidation to finance the acquisition of Musk from Twitter by 44,000 million dollars.
Nor did the self-driving Tesla that lost control in China last November, killing two people, help the company's value.
More information
The Pinaults, a story of ambition and a lot of art
This would have affected Musk's position in the
Forbes
magazine real-time
billionaire
ranking .
Last week he already briefly lost his title as the world's richest person to the Arnaults, although he later got it back.
We will have to see the final photo that he takes of the Bloomberg fortunes at the end of 2022, but the trend seems clear.
The Arnault family oversees the LVMH empire, which encompasses some 70 fashion, beverage and cosmetics brands.
His are Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Loewe, Sephora, Bulgari, Moët & Chandon or Tiffany, which report huge benefits to the family, with an estimated fortune of 188,000 million dollars, according to the publication
.
The patriarch, Bernard Arnault, 73, has been married twice and has five children.
Since, in 1984, it took control of the Boussac group, the former owner of Dior, which was then on the verge of bankruptcy, it has not stopped acquiring luxury brands, multiplying the value of the LVMH group by 15. In November In 2017, the Frenchman was involved in the so-called Paradise Papers, a set of documents linked to investments in tax havens.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, presenting the Roadster 2 model in Hawthorne (California, USA). REUTERS
For his part, Musk has a fortune that reaches just over 181,000 million.
He is the founder and CEO of the aerospace company SpaceX, the vehicle company Tesla and the excavation and infrastructure company The Boring Company.
To this is added the purchase this year of the social network Twitter after months of tug of war.
After joining the company, the tycoon has fired half the staff and has followed an erratic policy characterized by a defense of freedom of expression at all costs, above the moderation of false news and hate speech.
Musk became the richest man in the world in September 2021, when he surpassed Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, and at the time, Musk's direct competitor in the aerospace race, which is no longer fought by world powers but by mega-millionaires.
Musk's wealth, tied mostly to Tesla, was boosted by a meteoric rise in the automaker's stock price, which soared more than 1,000% in two years.
It peaked in November 2021. Since then, the manufacturer's shares have plunged 58%.
Meanwhile, those of LVMH have remained stable, with a slight growth of 3.5%.
The third position in the Forbes
real-time index
goes to Guatam Adani, president of the Indian business conglomerate Adani Group, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and investor Warren Buffett.
