Elon Musk has recently has surpassed Bernard Arnault and Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires list which is updated regularly to reflect changes in net worth. The owner of Tesla, X, and SpaceX now has a net worth of $210.7 billion. LVMH's Arnault holds the second place with $201 billion, and Amazon founder Bezos ranks third with $197.4 billion.
This comes two months after Musk lost his position atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to Bezos after shares in Tesla fell 7.2 percent. Musk then had a net worth of $197.7 billion while Bezos’s fortune was estimated to be $200.3 billion.
The Tesla boss becoming the richest person in the world also comes at a time when the company's shareholders have been advised to reject a $56 billion pay package for Musk. If passed, this would be the largest pay package for a CEO in corporate America.
In its report, proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis cited reasons like the "excessive size" of the pay deal, the dilutive effect upon exercise and the concentration of ownership. It also mentioned Musk's "slate of extraordinarily time-consuming projects" which have expanded with his high-profile purchase of Twitter, now known as X.
The pay package was proposed by Tesla's board of directors, which has repeatedly come under fire for its close ties with the billionaire. The package has no salary or cash bonus and sets rewards based on Tesla's market value rising to as much as $650 billion over the 10 years from 2018. The company is currently valued at about $571.6 billion, according to LSEG data.
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