The richest: Arnault surpasses Musk and leads the ranking – 01/27/2024 – Market

Frenchman Bernard Arnault became the richest man in the world this Friday (26), after shares in luxury goods group LVMH rose 13% on Friday morning.

As a result, the billionaire’s net worth reached US$207.8 billion (R$1.02 trillion), due to the increase of US$23.6 billion (R$115.9 billion) with the rise in shares, according to with the Forbes magazine ranking.

Arnault surpassed Elon Musk, owner of companies such as Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), who has US$204.5 billion (R$1 trillion) in assets.

The change is a result of the moment the main companies of the two billionaires are going through. On Thursday (25), the LVMH group announced a record sales and revenue reaching 86 billion euros (around US$93.4 billion or R$458.69 billion) and 15.2 billion euros (US $16.5 billion or R$81.03 billion), respectively. In sales, there was an increase of 9% compared to the previous year, while net profit grew 8%.

LVMH controls brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, Tag Heuer and Chandon. This week, Arnault also announced that two of his sons (Alexandre, 31, and Frédéric, 29) joined the group’s board of directors. The billionaire’s five children are also responsible for running the conglomerate’s companies.

On the other hand, Musk saw Tesla’s shares plummet more than 12% in market value on Thursday, a day after the billionaire announced that the electric car maker’s sales growth will slow this year and that it will prioritize manufacturing of a new model.

The devaluation resulted in the loss of US$80 billion (R$392.88 billion) in just one day for the company, with Musk seeing his net worth fall by US$18 billion (R$88.39 billion), according to Forbes.

“Tesla’s headlines essentially went from bad to worse,” TD Cowen analysts said, noting that fourth-quarter revenue and profit also fell short of expectations. Tesla also lost its position as sales leader in the industry, being overtaken by BYD. Musk also faces problems at X, which is the target of questions about its fight against misinformation.

With this change, Arnault returns to lead the Forbes ranking after seven months. He was at the top of the list for almost the entire first half of 2023, being overtaken by Musk on June 8, 2023.

see the list of the ten richest people in the world, according to Forbes

Position	Name	Net worth (in US$)
1st	Bernard Arnault	207.8 billion
2nd	Elon Musk	204.5 billion
3rd	Jeff Bezos	181.5 billion
4th	Larry Ellison	142.4 billion
5th	Mark Zuckerberg	139.4 billion
6°	Larry Page	126.6 billion
7°	Warren Buffett	126.4 billion
8°	bill Gates	122.8 billion
9th	Sergey Brin	121.2 billion
10°	Steve Ballmer	118.6 billion

_{Source: Forbes}

_{With information from Reuters and AFP}