World's richest man gets $32BILLION richer: Elon Musk's worth climbs to $304billion as Tesla stock soars after car maker rolled out nearly a million vehicles in 2021

Musk again took his worth over the £300b mark after first doing so in November

In doing so, he remained securely at the top of the Forbes world rich list

Tesla's soaring stock price is behind the South African's ever growing wealth

On Sunday, the electric car producer announced it had delivered more than 936,000 cars in 2021, surpassing projections by analysts


4 January 2022

The world's richest man started the new year richer, with Tesla founder Elon Mask adding $32.6 billion to his net worth bringing his fortune to $304.2 billion.

Musk's windfall once again took his worth over the $300 billion mark that he briefly passed in November, becoming the first person to ever do so.

According to Forbes, the controversial social-media savvy billionaire - who is also the founder behind the commercial space enterprise SpaceX - remained at the top of the world's rich list going into the new year.

In second place and $103.6 billion behind Musk is Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French fashion empire LVMH. Amazon founder and former-CEO Jeff Bezos sits in third place, Forbes said.

Tesla's soaring stock price has again been credited for the South African's growing wealth.

On Sunday, the electric car producer announced it had delivered more than 936,000 cars in 2021, surpassing projections by analysts, but also announced that the company had recalled 475,000 of its cars built between 2014 and 2021.

Forbes said Tesla shares increased by more than 13 percent by market close, with the company's market capitalisation again topping the $1 trillion mark, after dropping below that level last month.

As CEO of Tesla, Musk - who was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year - owns about 15.6 percent of the company's stock.

He has continued to sell shares, finishing the year having unloaded 3 million shares on the open market in order to cover the tax bills on around 5.7 million stock options that he exercised at the same time.

After questions levelled at billionaires - and Musk in particular - over whether they are paying their fair share in tax, Musk took to twitter in December to say that he would pay about $11 billion in taxes for 2021.

If true, this would place him among the biggest ever individual tax payers in the history of the US, although this only represents roughly 0.0036 percent of his worth.

He reportedly sold 15.7 million Tesla shares over the course of 2021 - worth more than $16 billion before tax.

Musk's fortune jumped more than $200 billion over 2020 and 2021. In 2021 alone, he added $116 billion to his net worth.

This, Forbes said, is the biggest one-year gain by any billionaire since the news outlet began tracking the wealth of high net-worth individuals.

Musk is set to earn another windfall later this month when Tesla reports its fourth quarter earnings. If the company meets certain operational and valuation goals, the world's richest man is set to become even richer.

2021 was an eventful year for Musk, marked by a hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live, a break-up with girlfriend Grimes, and his self-coronation as 'Technoking' of Tesla.

Musk made huge waves last month as he sold off many billions worth of his Tesla stock in a move purportedly dictated by a poll he posted on Twitter.

In reality, at least some of the stock sales were driven by mandatory taxes as he exercised stock options that will expire in August.

He has sold $16.4 billion worth of shares since early November when he said he would sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock if Twitter users agreed, which they did.

But Musk in September had set up a prearranged plan for stock sales related to options expiring next year, and Tesla in a filing on Tuesday said the program was complete.

Musk said last week that he would be done selling shares after his programmed sales ended, meaning that the selloff is now complete.

The final trades, reported on Tuesday, included exercising an option on 1.6 million shares and selling 934,090 of those shares to pay for taxes.

In total, Musk has sold 15.7 million shares in Tesla late in this year, approximately the 10 percent stake the billionaire had pledged to sell.

He exercised options granted in 2012 to buy nearly 23 million shares at $6.24 each, a fraction of Tesla's share price, which stood at $1069.33 in late trading on Thursday, the final trading session of the year.

Forbes' world top-10 richest people

1. Elon Musk - $304.2 billion

Source: Tesla, Space X

2. Bernard Arnault - £203.1 billion

Source: LVMH

3. Jeff Bezos - $196.3 billion

Source: Amazon

4. Bill Gates - $137.6 billion

Source: Microsoft

5. Larry Page - $123.7 billion

Source: Google

6. Larry Ellison - $122.6 billion

Source: Software

7. Mark Zuckerberg - $121.1 billion

Source: Facebook

8. Sergey Brin - $119.2 billion

Source: Google

9. Warren Buffett - $109.5 billion

Source: Berkshire Hathaway

10. Steve Ballmer - $105.4 billion

Source: Microsoft

Data from Forbes, as of January 4

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