Elon Musk Is No Longer the World’s Richest Person, Falls Behind Bernard Arnault
Tesla CEO trails the European mogul on the wealth rankings amid a slump in the car maker’s shares
Tesla CEO trails the European mogul on the wealth rankings amid a slump in the car maker’s shares
Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person.
Mr. Musk, the Tesla Inc. chief executive and new owner of Twitter Inc., gave up the unofficial title Tuesday to European mogul Bernard Arnault for Earth’s wealthiest individual, according to Bloomberg, which publishes a ranking of the richest people in the world. A prolonged slump in Tesla’s stock has wiped out more than $100 billion of Mr. Musk’s net worth this year.
The net worth of Mr. Musk, who claimed bragging rights as the wealthiest person in January 2021, is valued at $163.1 billion as of Tuesday morning, according to Bloomberg. He now trails Mr. Arnault, the chairman and chief executive of luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, whose personal wealth is estimated at $170.6 billion.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. An LVMH spokesman declined to comment.
When Mr. Musk first reached the pinnacle of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index almost two years ago, he overtook Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, driven by a meteoric rise in the value of Tesla. The car maker’s shares have fallen sharply this year, though, amid concerns about demand. Mr. Bezos has also fallen in the wealth ranks and is now the fifth-richest person, largely reflecting a drop in Amazon’s stock amid recession fears. Mr. Bezos has said he plans to give away most of his fortune to charity.
For many executives and founders, their net worth is at least partially tied up in shares of their businesses. That means volatility in stocks and other holdings can sway their measures of wealth. Establishing their exact net worth can also be tricky, in part because many of their holdings are private.
Mr. Musk is compensated in stock awards as Tesla’s CEO and doesn’t accept a cash salary from the electric-car company. He has accumulated most of his wealth in recent years as Tesla has turned profitable.
In January 2020, Mr. Musk’s net worth was valued at about $28 billion, according to Bloomberg. As Tesla’s stock soared, so did Mr. Musk’s wealth, which peaked at $336 billion in November 2021. He has lost more on paper this year than any other billionaire, according to Bloomberg.
Mr. Musk, a serial entrepreneur, runs rocket company SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. He also founded Boring Co., an underground tunnel business, and neuroscience startup Neuralink Corp. In October, Mr. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He has sold some Tesla stock this year at least in part to fund the Twitter deal, including selling $4 billion worth of shares last month.
It has been a rocky period for Twitter since Mr. Musk took ownership. He fired about half the staff, and the social-media company has seen waves of people leaving. It suffered “a massive drop in revenue” and was losing $4 million a day, he said soon after buying the business. Mr. Musk has said he aimed to make Twitter less dependent on advertising revenue that accounted for about 90% of sales, though efforts to introduce a paid subscription service have suffered repeated delays. He later said bankruptcy is a possibility for Twitter.
Mr. Arnault’s wealth, meanwhile, is largely tied up in the luxury empire LVMH.
A businessman from Northern France, Mr. Arnault bought the storied French fashion house Dior out of bankruptcy in the 1980s and then used it to amass a stake in LVMH. This shareholding structure remains in place today: the Arnaults own more than 97% of Dior, which in turn owns 41% of LVMH. The family also owns close to 7% of LVMH directly, with total voting rights of well above 50%.
Like some of his peers, Mr. Arnault went on a spending spree over the past three decades, allowing him to build economies of scale in advertising, shop leases and department-store space between his dozens of brands.
Ultimately, Mr. Arnault came out on top in a bruising race to become the biggest in the industry, earning the nickname “the wolf in cashmere” for the way he pursued acquisitions. LVMH’s wines-and-spirits division houses Dom Pérignon champagne and Hennessy cognac. Its fashion and leather goods unit includes brands like Loewe, Celine and Fendi, while the conglomerate also owns American jeweller Tiffany & Co. and watchmaker TAG Heuer.
Having gone on a tear since 2015, the luxury industry also has held up better than most this year. LVMH reported strong revenue in the most recent quarter as wealthy consumers continued to spend freely on luxury goods despite the uncertain economic backdrop.
Indian industrialist Gautam Adani is currently the third-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg. Mr. Adani is the chairman of his namesake Adani Group, an India-based conglomerate involved in initiatives including green energy, power and gas distribution. His push into green energy comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stressed development for infrastructure and renewable energy. Shares of Mr. Adani’s publicly traded businesses have risen this year.
Mr. Adani is the first person from Asia who has ranked this high on Bloomberg’s wealth index, long dominated by U.S. tech entrepreneurs. Earlier this year he became a centibillionaire, with his net worth exceeding that of Warren Buffett.
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
Office owners are struggling with near record-high vacancy rates
First, the good news for office landlords: A post-Labor Day bump nudged return-to-office rates in mid-September to their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.
Now the bad: Office attendance in big cities is still barely half of what it was in 2019, and company get-tough measures are proving largely ineffective at boosting that rate much higher.
Indeed, a number of forces—from the prospect of more Covid-19 cases in the fall to a weakening economy—could push the return rate into reverse, property owners and city officials say.
More than before, chief executives at blue-chip companies are stepping up efforts to fill their workspace. Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase are among the companies that have recently vowed to get tougher on employees who don’t show up. In August, Meta told employees they could face disciplinary action if they regularly violate new workplace rules.
But these actions haven’t yet moved the national return rate needle much, and a majority of companies remain content to allow employees to work at least part-time remotely despite the tough talk.
Most employees go into offices during the middle of the week, but floors are sparsely populated on Mondays and Fridays. In Chicago, some September days had a return rate of over 66%. But it was below 30% on Fridays. In New York, it ranges from about 25% to 65%, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security-card swipes.
Overall, the average return rate in the 10 U.S. cities tracked by Kastle Systems matched the recent high of 50.4% of 2019 levels for the week ended Sept. 20, though it slid a little below half the following week.
The disappointing return rates are another blow to office owners who are struggling with vacancy rates near record highs. The national office average vacancy rose to 19.2% last quarter, just below the historical peak of 19.3% in 1991, according to Moody’s Analytics preliminary third-quarter data.
Business leaders in New York, Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta and Houston interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they have seen only slight improvements in sidewalk activity and attendance in office buildings since Labor Day.
“It feels a little fuller but at the margins,” said Sandy Baruah, chief executive of the Detroit Regional Chamber, a business group.
Lax enforcement of return-to-office rules is one reason employees feel they can still work from home. At a roundtable business discussion in Houston last week, only one of the 12 companies that attended said it would enforce a return-to-office policy in performance reviews.
“It was clearly a minority opinion that the others shook their heads at,” said Kris Larson, chief executive of Central Houston Inc., a group that promotes business in the city and sponsored the meeting.
Making matters worse, business leaders and city officials say they see more forces at work that could slow the return to office than those that could accelerate it.
Covid-19 cases are up and will likely increase further in the fall and winter months. “If we have to go back to distancing and mask protocols, that really breaks the office culture,” said Kathryn Wylde, head of the business group Partnership for New York City.
Many cities are contending with an increase in homelessness and crime. San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., which are struggling with these problems, are among the lowest return-to-office cities in the Kastle System index.
About 90% of members surveyed by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce said that the city couldn’t recover until homelessness and public safety problems were addressed, said Rachel Smith, chief executive. That is taken into account as companies make decisions about returning to the office and how much space they need, she added.
Cuts in government services and transportation are also taking a toll. Wait times for buses run by Houston’s Park & Ride system, one of the most widely used commuter services, have increased partly because of labor shortages, according to Larson of Central Houston.
The commute “is the remaining most significant barrier” to improving return to office, Larson said.
Some landlords say that businesses will have more leverage in enforcing return-to-office mandates if the economy weakens. There are already signs of such a shift in cities that depend heavily on the technology sector, which has been seeing slowing growth and layoffs.
But a full-fledged recession could hurt office returns if it results in widespread layoffs. “Maybe you get some relief in more employees coming back,” said Dylan Burzinski, an analyst with real-estate analytics firm Green Street. “But if there are fewer of those employees, it’s still a net negative for office.”
The sluggish return-to-office rate is leading many city and business leaders to ask the federal government for help. A group from the Great Lakes Metro Chambers Coalition recently met with elected officials in Washington, D.C., lobbying for incentives for businesses that make commitments to U.S. downtowns.
Baruah, from the Detroit chamber, was among the group. He said the chances of such legislation being passed were low. “We might have to reach crisis proportions first,” he said. “But we’re trying to lay the groundwork now.”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual