Twitter owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk has been knocked off the top of the Forbes billionaire list after a $US4.7 billion ($6.86 billion) drop in his net worth, according to Forbes.
Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, and his family now claim the title as the world's richest with Forbes plotting a personal wealth of $US188.6 billion.
Mr Musk, who had until recently consistently held the top spot on the Forbes list since taking the title from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in September 2021, still has a net worth of $US176.5 billion according to the media company.
Bloomberg values his fortunes lower at $US163.1 billion according to its Billionaires Index and estimates that his fortune — once valued as high as $US340 billion — has tumbled by more than $US100 billion since January.
Mr Musk had already briefly lost his title as the world's richest person earlier in December, according to Forbes, following a steep drop in the value of his stake in the electric-car maker and his $US44 billion bet on Twitter.
His net worth dropped below $US200 billion earlier in November as investors dumped Tesla's shares on worries the top executive and largest shareholder of the world's most valuable electric-vehicle maker was more preoccupied with Twitter.
Mr Musk closed the deal for the social media company in October with $US13 billion in loans and a $US33.5 billion equity commitment.
Besides Tesla and Twitter, Musk also heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.
ABC/Reuters
