Elon Musk Became the Richest Man in the World by Beating Jeff Bezos
Elon Musk was named the world’s richest person by Bloomberg while Forbes think otherwise
Elon Musk recently became the richest man globally for a brief period after beating Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The main reason for the sudden increase in wealth was the rise of Tesla shares.
Elon Musk was named the world’s richest person by Bloomberg while Forbes think that Jeff Bezos still had USD 7.8 billion (About AUD 10.5 billion) more than Musk. As per Bloomberg, the gain in Tesla’s shares that occurred on Thursday ensured that Elon Musk had USD 188.5 billion (About AUD 242.3 billion). It was USD 1.5 billion (About AUD 1.9 billion) more than Jeff Bezos.
The Wealth of Elon Musk
Musk’s personal wealth increased last year when Tesla became the most valuable car manufacturing company globally, and its shares rose by more than eightfold. He has a 20 per cent stake in the company along with USD 42 billion (about AUD 54.1 billion) of unrealized paper gains on stock options.
Tesla shares increased by 7.4 per cent on Thursday and reached a record high of USD 811.61 billion (About AUD 1,046 billion).
However, as per the Forbes Billionaires list, Elon Musk is still behind Jeff Bezos as he has USD 7.8 billion (about AUD 10.1 billion) less than the Amazon CEO. It has a more conservative estimate because he has pledged Tesla’s stake as collateral for personal loans. To take that into account, Forbes applies a 25 per cent discount to his shareholding as per a report released in November 2020.
About two years back, Elon Musk and Tesla were in serious trouble as the company was about a month away from bankruptcy. At that time, he considered selling it off to Apple.
2020 has been an important year not just for Musk but other billionaires as well. About 2,200 billionaires worldwide saw their wealth grow by USD 1.9 trillion (about AUD 2.45 trillion) collectively. Though Bezos has not had as amazing fortune as Musk, his wealth has also grown considerably and has been increasing for months with no signs of slowing down soon.
This year seems to be luckier for Elon Musk. Things are changing for all of us as vaccination has begun and even Bill Gates said that life would be back to normal this year.
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