Black Thursday for the boss of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. While the Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued Elon Musk’s fortune at $177 billion on the morning of April 20, a day later it was estimated at $164 billion, BFMTV points out. If he is still far from ruin, he nevertheless lost nearly 13 billion euros in a single day, a record loss for 2023. The billionaire thus loses a few lengths behind Bernard Arnault in the ranking of the biggest fortunes of the world. What happened ?
It is in fact a combination of factors that can explain this sudden decline in the fortune of the billionaire, who had already experienced many setbacks in 2022. First of all, on the evening of Wednesday April 19, Tesla revealed a profit down by 24% in the first quarter of 2023. In question, the assumed strategy of Elon Musk to lower the prices of electric vehicles to increase sales. The figures released on Wednesday were enough to cool some investors.
The next day, Elon Musk was not at the end of his troubles, while Starship, the largest rocket in the world, launched by SpaceX, exploded in mid-flight. This test flight did not discourage the boss, who promised new tests soon. But if SpaceX is not listed on the stock exchange, the company is closely linked to the figure of Elon Musk and this first failure could have impacted its reputation on the financial markets.
Last embarrassing circumstance in Musk’s heritage: from Thursday, April 20, Twitter, the social network acquired by the billionaire in 2022, began to remove blue authentication badges from users who did not pay a subscription. This badge, which certifies the identity of the personalities present on Twitter, has notably been removed from the accounts of former President Donald Trump, but also from the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or even from the singer Beyoncé. Enough to fuel a new controversy and further discredit Elon Musk.
