Elon Musk set to pass Mark Zuckerberg as the third richest person in the world

Between Tesla and Facebook.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is poised to become the third-richest person in the world, passing up Mark Zuckerberg, after his electric car company Tesla was selected to join the S&P 500. 

Tesla’s value soared in after-hour trading on Monday with stocks that closed at $408.09 surging about 14 percent by 6pm. 

Tesla will enter the S&P 500, a stock market index that measures the performance of 500 large companies listed on the US stock exchange, on December 21 after it failed to make the cut back in September. The news led Musk’s net worth to swell by more than $15billion in extended trading, lifting his fortune to $117.5billion, according to Bloomberg. 

 As of Monday's close Musk was listed as the fourth richest person in the world behind Facebook's Zuckerberg, who follows behind Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on Bloomberg's Billionaire Index. 

Tesla is now valued at more than Disney, Toyota and Coca-Cola and has a market cap of nearly $387billion. To be eligible to join the S&P 500 a company must be based in the US, have a market capitalization of at least $8.2billion, be liquid and at least half of its shares must be available to the public, as per CNN. Companies must also report four straight quarters of profit. 

Tesla reported its fifth consecutive quarter of profit with third-quarter revenue of $8.77billion.

Culled From Dailymail.Co.UK