New York (AFP)
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 surge in stock market shares, according to the Bloomberg agency.
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 Thursday morning in front of Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, according to the calculations of the Bloomberg agency which maintains a ranking of billionaires.
Jeff Bezos held the title of richest man on the planet since 2017.
While Tesla stock, which saw its value more than 7-fold in 2020 and was still advancing strongly on Wall Street on Thursday, the fortune of the South African-born engineer, reached $ 188.5 billion shortly after the opening of the meeting, exceeding that of Jeff Bezos by 1.5 billion.
The day before, Tesla broke the $ 700 billion mark for the first time at the close as the stock finished up almost 3% to $ 755.98.
Thursday morning, the action was close to $ 800 climbing 5.7%.
The group's sales, however, remain a long way from traditional manufacturers: Tesla only sold 499,550 cars in 2020, a long way from Volkswagen and its 11 million vehicles sold in 2019, for example.
But Tesla is benefiting from investor enthusiasm for electric vehicles and the fact that it has managed to make money for five consecutive quarters, which allowed it to enter the prestigious S&P 500 index in December.
© 2021 AFP