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Bernard Arnault has nabbed the title as the highest-net worth individual in the world, a feat that has unseated billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos from their prior spots and that was fueled by the performance of the French luxury goods giant he helms.

Arnault’s top spot among the wealthiest in the world comes amid LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the company he has run for decades as CEO, seeing notable growth in recent years. His and his family’s personal fortune — which includes an almost 50% ownership stake in LVMH — was estimated by Forbes in early April to be at $211 billion on its yearly list of the world’s richest people for 2023, compared to $158 billion the prior year.

LVMH SHUFFLES LEADERSHIP AT LOUIS VUITTON, DIOR

As of Tuesday afternoon, Arnault’s net worth was estimated to total $235.7 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires tracker. 

Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, and Delphine Arnault, executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, leave after the Spring/Summer 2020 collection show for fashion house Louis Vuitton during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris on Jun (REUTERS/Charles Platiau/Files / Reuters Photos)

LVMH’s revenue in 2022 totaled 79.18 billion euros, marking a 23% increase from the 64.215 billion euros posted in the prior year. It reported generating 44.65 billion euros of revenue for 2020.

For group share of net profit, LVMH had a 17% rise year-over-year, going from 12.04 billion euros in 2021 to 14.04 billion in 2022. Its net profit in 2020 was 4.7 billion euros.

In its most recently reported quarter, the luxury goods giant had revenue of 21.03 billion euros, up from 18 billion in first-quarter 2022.

"Europe and Japan, which enjoyed strong growth momentum, benefited from robust demand from local customers and international travelers; the United States, a market which continues to grow, had a steady performance," the company said in its April quarterly earnings release. "Asia experienced a significant rebound following the lifting of health restrictions."

Shoppers wait in line to enter the Louis Vuitton store in Union Square in San Francisco on Dec. 6, 2021. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Over the past 12 months, the value of the LVMH’s stock has seen a nearly 41% jump, trading at roughly $193 on Tuesday afternoon. The company counts Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Tag Heuer, Bulgari and Tiffany & Co. among its numerous brands. 

As Arnault’s position among the world’s richest rose, Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, and Bezos, the founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, both saw their net worths decrease by tens of billions of dollars, causing their rankings on Forbes’ 2023 Billionaires List to dip. 

BILLIONAIRES BEZOS, MUSK SLIDE IN FORBES WORLD'S RICHEST LIST

Musk and Bezos each experienced a one-spot drop, with the former taking second-place, at $180 billion, and the latter coming in third, at $114 billion, according to the outlet. On its real-time list, they sat in those same spots, with their net worths on Tuesday afternoon at $187.4 billion and $125.4 billion, respectively.

From left, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, and Elon Musk. (Annegret Hilse/SVEN SIMON Reuters | Nathan Laine/Bloomberg | Britta Pedersen-Pool)

Forbes noted Musk’s activity on Twitter and Tesla investors reacting to his purchase of the social media platform in connection to his fortune plunging $39 billion year-over-year. Meanwhile, Amazon has seen its share price go down over 30% in a one-year span, something that contributed to Bezos’ change in ranking.

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Arnault and Musk have been trading the "world's richest" title in recent months, as Tesla shares have fluctuated. The Musk-run electric vehicle and clean energy company has quarterly earnings slated for release on Wednesday.

Amazon will put out its latest financial results April 27.Ticker Security Last Change Change % LVMUY LVMH MOT HENNESSY LOUIS VUITTON SE 194.5 +1.23 +0.64%TSLA TESLA INC. 180.59 -3.72 -2.02%AMZN AMAZON.COM INC. 104.30 +2.00 +1.96%

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Politics

Canada’s new prime minister once said Bitcoin had ‘serious deficiencies’

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Canada’s new prime minister once said Bitcoin had ‘serious deficiencies’

Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, once said recreating a virtual global gold standard like Bitcoin “would be a criminal act of monetary amnesia.”

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Sports

Bell rings up first Cup 3-race win streak since ’21

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Bell rings up first Cup 3-race win streak since '21

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell became the first NASCAR Cup Series driver to win three straight races in the NextGen car, holding off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin by 0.049 seconds to win the second-closest race in Phoenix Raceway history Sunday.

Bell started 11th in the 312-mile race after winning at Atlanta and Circuit of America the previous two weeks. The JGR driver took the lead out of the pits on a caution and stayed out front on two late restarts to become the first driver to win three straight races since Kyle Larson in 2021.

The second restart led to some tense moments between Bell and Hamlin — enough to make their team owner feel a bit queasy.

“I was ready to upchuck,” JGR Racing owner Joe Gibbs said.

Bell became the fourth driver in Cup Series history to win three times in the first four races — and the first since Kevin Harvick in 2018. The last Cup Series driver to win four straight races was Jimmie Johnson in 2007.

“We’ve had four races this year, put ourselves in position in all four and managed to win three, which is a pretty remarkable batting average — something that will be hard to maintain, I believe,” Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens said.

The Phoenix race was the first since Richmond last year to give teams two sets of option tires. The option red tires have much better grip, but start to fall off after about 35 laps, creating an added strategic element.

A handful of racers went to the red tires early — Joey Logano and Ryan Preece among them — and it paid off with runs to the lead before they fell back.

Bell was among those who had a set of red tires left for the final stretch and used it to his advantage, pulling away from Hamlin on a restart with 17 laps left.

Hamlin pulled alongside Bell over the final two laps after the last restart and the two bumped a couple of times before rounding into the final two turns. Bell barely stayed ahead of Hamlin, crossing the checkered flag with a wobble for his 12th career Cup Series win. He led 105 laps.

“It worked out about as opposite as I could have drawn it up in my head,” Bell said. “But the races that are contested like that, looking back, are the ones that mean the most to you.”

Said Hamlin: “I kind of had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to ship it in there. We just kind of ran out of race track there.”

Larson finished third, Josh Berry fourth and Chris Buescher rounded out the top five.

Katherine Legge, who became the first woman to race on the Cup Series since Danica Patrick at the Daytona 500 seven years ago, didn’t get off to a great start and finished 30th.

Fighting a tight car, Legge got loose coming out of Turn 2 and spun her No. 78 Chevrolet, forcing her to make a pit stop. She dropped to the back of the field and had a hard time making up ground before bumping another car and spinning again on Lap 215, taking out Daniel Suarez with her.

“We made some changes to the car overnight and they were awful,” Legge said. “I was just hanging on to it.”

Logano, who started on the front row in his first race at Phoenix Raceway since capturing his third Cup Series at the track last fall, fell to the back of the field after a mistake on an early restart.

Trying to get a jump on Byron, Logano barely dipped his No. 22 Ford below the yellow line at the start/finish. NASCAR officials reviewed the restart and forced the Team Penske driver to take a pass through on pit road as the entire field passed him on the track.

“No way,” Logano said on his radio. “That’s freakin’ ridiculous.”

Logano twice surged to the lead after switching to the red tires, but started falling back on the primary tires following a restart. He finished 13th.

Preece took an early gamble by going to the red option tires and it paid off with a run from 33rd to third. The RFK Racing driver dropped back as the tires wore off, but went red again following a caution with about 90 laps left and surged into the lead.

Preece went back to the primary tires with 42 laps to go and started dropping back, finishing 15th.

The series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend.

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Technology

Bitcoin falls over 5% as volatility continues after Trump’s bitcoin reserve plan

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Bitcoin falls over 5% as volatility continues after Trump's bitcoin reserve plan

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Bitcoin fell on Monday as volatility in the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency continues following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to create a strategic bitcoin reserve for the United States.

Bitcoin was trading at $81,712, down over 5% but off earlier lows, at 9:42 a.m. Singapore time, according to Coin Metrics.

The reserve will be funded by coins that have been seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases and there are no plans for the U.S. government to buy more bitcoin. After the strategic reserve announcement last Thursday, crypto prices declined as investors were disappointed it wasn’t a more aggressive program.

Other cryptocurrency prices also dropped on Monday. Both ether and XRP were down about 7.5% at around 9:43 a.m. Singapore time.

Some investors, however, said the move to establish a reserve was bullish in the long-term.

“I absolutely think the market has this wrong,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “The market is short-term disappointed” that the government didn’t say it was immediately going to start acquiring 100,000 or 200,000 bitcoin, he added.

Hougan pointed towards comments on X from White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks, who said the U.S. would look for “budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”

“I think the right question to ask is: did this executive order make it more likely that in the future, bitcoin will be a geopolitically important currency or asset? Will other governments look to follow the U.S.’s lead and build their own strategic reserve? And to me, the answer to that is emphatically yes,” Hougan said.

“The reason that questions matters is that’s the question that determines if bitcoin is $80,000 a coin or $1 million a coin.”

Hougan called the decline in crypto prices a “short-term setback.”

“I think the market will soon find its footing and realize that actually this is incredibly bullish long term for this asset and for crypto as a whole,” he said.

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