Elon Musk, the boss of high-end electric vehicle maker Tesla, rose to the rank of the richest man in the world on Thursday thanks to the soaring stock market shares, ahead of Jeff Bezos.
Thanks to the surge in Tesla shares – of which he owns 18% – on Wall Street, the whimsical 49-year-old entrepreneur, who also heads SpaceX, passed the Amazon founder on Thursday morning, according to calculations by the Bloomberg agency which maintains a ranking of billionaires.
Mr. Bezos held the title of the most wealthy man on the planet since 2017. Next come Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, luxury emperor Bernard Arnault (LVMH) and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, aged just 36. years.
As Tesla stock, which saw its value more than 7-fold in 2020, still rose sharply on Wall Street on Thursday, the South African-born engineer’s fortune hit $ 188.5 billion soon after. the opening of the session, exceeding that of Jeff Bezos by 1.5 billion.
Most of Elon Musk’s wealth is actually stocks, part of which serves as collateral collateral for loans to invest in his companies, according to Forbes.
The charismatic and innovative boss of Silicon Valley, whom he left for Texas with more flexible taxation, has promised that he will give half of his fortune to charity, says the magazine.
But for now, he is far from having done so, having explained in a tweet in 2018 that he would make “big payments in 20 years when Tesla is stabilized”.
On Wednesday, Tesla’s stock market valuation broke the $ 700 billion mark for the first time at the close as the title finished up almost 3% to $ 755.98.
By mid-day Thursday, the stock topped $ 800, climbing 6%.
Despite the pandemic, the economic slowdown and unemployment, the American stock market rose from record to record at the end of 2020 with the craze of investment funds as small carriers for the big names in vogue like You’re here.
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And in mid-December, the billionaire’s group had its stock market consecration by joining the prestigious S&P 500 index, bringing together the 500 largest listed companies in the United States.
By joining the S&P 500, Tesla shares were systematically included in listed index funds (exchange-traded funds or ETFs), which passively follow the fluctuations of the index, which further boosted the stock.
The company weighs more than General Motors, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen combined.
However, the group’s sales remain far from traditional manufacturers: Tesla only sold 499,550 cars in the year 2020, far for example from Volkswagen and its 11 million vehicles sold in 2019.
However, it is one of the only manufacturers to have done well in 2020 when the automotive market suffered a halt in the spring with the temporary closure of factories and many dealers in the United States in the face of the spread of the Covid. -19.
Tesla managed to increase its deliveries by 36% in the world last year when GM saw its sales fall by 11.8% in the United States.
Mr. Musk’s group benefits from the investor enthusiasm for electric vehicles and the fact that he has managed to make money for five consecutive quarters.
The company continues to operate almost like a start-up, according to analysts who stress that it does not have to manage unions or multiple production sites.
Thanks to its new factory in Shanghai, Tesla is well established in China, a country which could, according to the firm Deloitte, represent 49% of the electric vehicle market in 2030.
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