Elon Musk lost over $200b in 2022
Published on Jan 03, 2023 at 6:02 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Jan 03, 2023 at 6:50 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
Elon Musk probably didn’t have a great start to 2023 considering he lost about $200 billion last year.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is still a billionaire, but he has lost a bigger a fortune than anyone in history.
READ MORE: Musk says he WILL step down as Twitter CEO
Musk was worth a record $340 billion at his peak in November 2021.
However, his net worth has been steadily declining since, chiefly because of his decision to acquire Twitter.
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The Twitter deal had a snowball effect on Musk’s fortune.
The South African investor and engineer first announced he wanted to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share ($42-44 billion) in the spring of 2022.
He did a sharp 180 shortly thereafter, walking away from the deal citing Twitter spam and bot accounts as the main reason for his decision.
But just a few weeks later, Musk changed his mind again after Twitter ex-ceo Parag Agrawal threatened legal action against the business mogul.
Ironically – and perhaps not surprisingly – Agrawal was immediately fired by Elon Musk after the takeover.
Musk began dumping his Tesla shares to fund the Twitter acquisition in the spring of 2022 and he basically hasn’t stopped since.
The CEO’s controversial leadership style contributed to the drop in value of Tesla stock.
In addition to that, Musk has been attempting to change Twitter and make it profitable with a trial-and-error method.
This hasn’t gone down terribly well with the media, investors and, in part at least, Twitter users.
On his first day as CEO of Twitter, Musk walked into the Twitter HQ carrying a sink – literally.
He then fired a few top execs and 50 percent of the staff before announcing his intention to step down as CEO.
Musk famously shares polls on Twitter to ask users about crucial decisions about his businesses, always promising he will “abide by the results”.
Many people believe Musk shares these polls knowing perfectly well what the result will be.
A way to have users ‘sanction’ a decision he’s already made, as it were.
Be that as it may, it is certainly considered unorthodox and the stock market reacts accordingly.
At the time of writing, Elon Musk is second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $146.5 billion.
He is preceded by Bernard Arnault, CEO of the LVMH luxury holding, with $182.8 billion.
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