Roving Periscope: Elon Musk enters Guinness Records for losing $182 bn in 14 months!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Elon Musk, who was the world’s wealthiest human with a personal fortune of USD 320 billion in November 2021, now has another distinction: with his net worth dropping to USD 137 billion in January 2023, he has entered the Guinness World Records (GWR) as the biggest wealth loser-ever.
It’s all because of the poor performance of his Tesla stocks, the media reported on Thursday.
In a blog post, GWR cited Forbes’ estimates that Musk lost around USD182 billion since November 2021 but noted that other sources indicate the figure is close to USD 200 billion.
“Although the exact figure is almost impossible to ascertain, Musk’s total losses far surpass the previous record of USD 58.6 billion, set by Japanese tech investor Masayoshi Son in 2000.”
According to reports, Musk sold USD 7 billion worth of Tesla stock as he was trying to finance his deal to buy Twitter and another USD 4 billion in November 2022. In December, he sold another USD 3.58 billion worth of stock, bringing his total sell-off to over USD 23 billion since April 2022.
“Musk’s misfortunes also saw him lose his status as the world’s richest person to Bernard Arnault (France), founder of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), who has an estimated net worth of USD 190 billion,” GWR said.
This alarming decline accelerated in October after Musk bought Twitter for roughly USD 44 billion. “The tumultuous takeover, coupled with Musk’s polarizing behavior on the platform, sparked the biggest Tesla stock sell-off since the company went public in 2010,” it added.
Guinness said that in the case of Masayoshi Son, whose net worth declined from a peak of USD 78 billion in February 2000 to USD 19.4 billion in July of the same year, the value of his company, Softbank, was wiped out by the dot-com crash.
The firm eventually acquired several US and British technology companies, allowing it to rebound. “As Elon Musk continues to build his own tech conglomerate, we won’t be surprised to see him bounce back too at some point in the future,” the Guinness blog post said.
