Elon Musk has overtaken Bill Gates in the ranking of billionaires and becomes the second richest man it he world. Thanks to the rise in Tesla shares, the CEO has become $7B richer in one day alone.
The soaring share price of the US electric car manufacturer Tesla on the stock market is causing the fortunes of company boss Elon Musk to continue to grow. According to the billionaire ranking “Bloomberg Billionaires Index”, the 49-year-old star entrepreneur overtook Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Monday and is now considered the second richest person in the world.
Thanks to the strong 6.5 percent rise in the price of Tesla shares, Musk’s fortune has risen by 7.2 billion to 127.9 billion dollars (108 billion euros) in a single day. Since the beginning of the year, it has already increased by a massive 100.3 billion dollars. Only last Tuesday, the entrepreneur rose to become the third richest person in the world, overtaking Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.
In Bloomberg’s super-rich charts, Gates last reached 127.7 billion dollars. His fortune would be considerably higher if he did not donate so much money. At the top of the billionaire list is still the undisputed head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, whose assets the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” estimates at 182 billion dollars.
As major shareholders of their companies, Musk and Bezos profit above all from their strong share price performance on the stock exchange. Tesla’s share price has risen by 675 percent in the past twelve months. With a market capitalization of almost 500 billion dollars, the company is by far the world’s most heavily traded car manufacturer – despite relatively low production figures and only modest profits to date.
Even tough Elon Musk is the second richest man in some indexes, others show different results. The figures in billionaire charts such as the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” or the “Forbes” lists are merely estimates based on publicly available information on assets such as stocks, real estate, art objects and other luxury goods. Musk ranks fourth in the “Forbes Billionaires List” with $110.5 billion in assets.
