Tesla has misplaced almost half its market worth since its founder, Elon Musk, bid for Twitter in April, lowering his internet value by about $70bn and placing his title as world’s richest particular person in danger.

Shares within the electrical automotive firm traded at $340.79 on 13 April, the day earlier than Twitter revealed in a securities submitting that the billionaire had made a hostile bid to purchase the social media firm for $43.4bn. Since then the Tesla share value has plunged by 49% to $173.44 (£141.29), additionally as a result of issues round disruptions at considered one of its factories in Shanghai.

The Tesla boss has offered $20bn of Tesla shares since April to fund the buyout. He now owns 445m shares, in accordance with Reuters, and the share value decline has diminished the worth of that holding, from $151bn to $77bn.

This implies his declare to be the planet’s wealthiest particular person is underneath menace, with France’s Bernard Arnault, chief government of the luxurious group LVMH, snapping at his heels. On Wednesday, share actions meant Arnault briefly took high spot.

Musk has stated of his Twitter takeover: “Having a public platform that’s massively trusted and broadly inclusive is extraordinarily necessary to the way forward for civilisation.”

Nonetheless, Tesla shareholders fear about how he’s dividing his time between the social media website and his many different ventures such because the rocket firm SpaceX, and that operating Twitter is an excessive amount of of a distraction.

Including to these issues, Musk’s bankers are contemplating changing a number of the $13bn high-interest debt that he used to purchase the platform in October with margin loans backed by Tesla inventory, Bloomberg reported.

Nonetheless, the billionaire tweeted: “When there are macroeconomic dangers, it’s typically sensible to keep away from utilizing margin loans on any firm, as shares could transfer in methods which are decoupled from their long-term potential.”

He’s underneath stress to show round Twitter, which was already struggling earlier than he purchased it, making a $221m internet loss final yr.

Because the acquisition, Musk has fired about half of Twitter’s workforce, roughly 3,700 staff, whereas lots of extra subsequently resigned. The corporate faces a variety of lawsuits over the sackings and different points. This week it additionally got here underneath investigation by metropolis officers in San Francisco after a criticism that the corporate allegedly transformed rooms in its headquarters to sleeping quarters.