Last week the world faltered for a moment. At least for Elon Musk’s loyal followers. After all, she and he were – at least for a while – used to their idol being the richest person in the world. For 14 months was the top performer on the Forbes list. That ended last Wednesday, when French luxury brand owner Bernard Arnault overtook Musk. His empire includes Louis Vuitton (handbags), Moët & Chandon (champagne) and Hennessy (cognac).
For a few hours he could call himself the richest person in the world, then Musk caught up again – twice. At the end of the day, Musk was the richest person again. Everything as usual. But old-school capitalism is catching up, the old luxury goods are in demand again – while the representatives of the new tech capitalism, especially the backpack-carrying Musk, seem to be coming under increasing pressure.
Of course, one could ask what the whole thing is all about, these rich rankings. In fact, it might not really matter. Mainly because the money is “just” a number on paper anyway, and not real gold bars in the basement that are being hauled back and forth from Arnault’s villa in France to Musk’s apartment building in the USA. After all, the rankings are largely based on the development of the share price, and that hasn’t been so brilliant for Musk recently.
Especially in times like this, many want to hold on to a few simple things
But it would be naïve to say that people don’t want to speculate about such – comparatively – succinct problems of the rich. Just at times like this, many want to hold on to a few simple things. It’s worth taking a closer look at the rankings of the rich, a bit of voyeurism doesn’t hurt. If you follow the world of the beautiful and the rich regularly, you will see many old acquaintances there. All men, of course: Tech greats like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google) or Bill Gates (Microsoft). The legendary investor Warren Buffett is of course also represented.
But although the tech billionaires are still so numerous, what can be observed in the entire stock market world is also noticeable here: For a long time, tech stocks were the favorites of stockbrokers, now they are weakening – or are no longer growing as strongly as they are previously. The tech billionaires had to accept some heavy losses as a result.
You won’t find Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, among the 25 richest people in the world. He has lost almost two-thirds of his wealth on paper. The luxury sector, on the other hand, which includes Musk’s rival Bernard Arnault, expects 2022 to be a record year worldwide. The champagne corks are literally popping here. Because there is not a crisis everywhere in the world.
Behind Musk and Arnault in third place is someone who most people in this country have probably never heard of: Indian CEO Gautam Adani, who makes his money mainly from airports and ports. He was able to increase his fortune by 50 billion dollars – more than anyone else in the world during this period.
Adani fulfills the classic “from rags to riches” story: He comes from a rather modest background and financed his wealth largely from his own resources. But he has one thing in common with Musk: his friends think he’s daring, his enemies say he gambles. And maybe he’ll overtake Musk at some point. In any case, observers of the rich rankings are on the alert.