Elon Musk could lose world’s richest person title

LONDON: Tesla has lost nearly half its market value since its founder, Elon Musk, bid for Twitter in April, reducing his net worth by about $70 billion and putting his title as worlds richest person at risk.

Shares in the electric car company traded at $340.79 on April 13, the day before Twitter revealed in a securities filing that the billionaire had made a hostile bid to buy the social media company for $43.4 billion, the Guardian reported.

Since then the Tesla share price has plunged by 49 per cent to $173.44, also due to concerns around disruptions at one of its factories in Shanghai.

The Tesla boss has sold $20 billion of Tesla shares since April to fund the buyout.

This means his claim to be the planet's wealthiest person is under threat, with France's Bernard Arnault, chief executive of the luxury group LVMH, snapping at his heels. On Wednesday, share movements meant Arnault briefly took top spot, The Guardian reported.

Musk has said of his Twitter takeover: "Having a public platform that is massively trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation."

However, Tesla shareholders worry about how he is dividing his time between the social media site and his many other ventures such as the rocket company SpaceX, and that running Twitter is too much of a distraction.

He is under pressure to turn around Twitter, which was already struggling before he bought it, making a $221m net loss last year, the Guardian reported.