Elon Musk Sells New $3.6bn Tranche Of Tesla Shares

The latest sale brings the total amount sold this year to $23 billion, and it comes after the title of "world's richest man" was taken away.

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Elon Musk sold another $3.6 billion worth of Tesla shares the same week that France's Bernard Arnault passed him as the world's richest person.

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The sale, which was revealed in a regulatory filing, means that Musk has now made more than $20bn from selling his stock in the electric car company this year.

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The Tesla CEO is gathering funds for his $44bn acquisition of Twitter, but the document didn't say why he sold 22m shares this week.

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Bloomberg says that Musk is worth $161bn and Arnault is worth $172bn. Arnault is in charge of brands like Louis Vuitton and Dom Pérignon.

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Last week, Musk's wealth briefly fell below Arnault's, but he quickly got it back, only to lose it again this week.

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This year, Tesla's stock price has dropped by half, which is worse than other automakers and the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which is down about 30%.

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Up until November 23, Musk had sold 72.2 million Tesla shares at an average price of $268 each, bringing in $19.4 billion before taxes.

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Musk used more than $20 billion of his own money and $7.1 billion from friends and business partners to buy Twitter in October. He also put in around $4 billion.

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But he also runs other valuable businesses, like his rocket company SpaceX, which is reportedly in talks about an IPO that could value it at up to $150bn.

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