Gautam Adani becomes third richest person in the world; First Asian to be in top 3

By: Yash Gupte

Business tycoon Gautam Adani has surpassed Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton to become the third-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Business tycoon Gautam Adani has surpassed Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton to become the third-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. With an estimated fortune of $137 billion (as of August 29), Indian entrepreneur Gautam Adani is now the third-richest person in the world and the first Asian to enter the top three. Gautam Adani now has a total wealth of $143 billion as of the end of August, a rise of $6 billion. Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily ranking index of the world's billionaires updated at the closing of every trading day in New York.

The 60-year-old Gautam Adani has invested the last five years in growing his coal-to-ports conglomerate by foraying into a variety of industries, including data centers, cement, media, and alumina. The group today controls the largest private-sector coal miner, city-gas distributor, and operator of ports and airports in India. Environmentalists have criticized the company's Carmichael mine in Australia, but it promised in November to invest $70 billion in renewable energy to become its greatest generator in the world. Concerns about the quick expansion have grown as his empire grew into one of the largest companies in the world, fueling the incredible wealth gains. According to a report released this month by CreditSights, Mr. Adani's deal-making spree has been largely supported by debt and that his enterprise is "seriously over-leveraged."

Concerns over ambiguous ownership structures and a deficiency of analyst coverage at Adani Group companies have also been voiced by certain lawmakers and market observers. However, as the billionaire concentrated on areas that Prime Minister Narendra Modi views as essential to achieving India's long-term goals, the value of shares has drastically increased, some of them by more than 1,000% since 2020, with prices reaching 750 times earnings. In 2022 alone, Adani increased his wealth by $60.9 billion, five times more than anyone else. He initially surpassed Mukesh Ambani as the wealthiest Asian in February, hit the billionaire milestone in April, and last month overtook Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates as the fourth-richest person on the planet. Adani’s wealth has increased from $8 Billion in 2014-15 to $143 Billion in 2022, a surge of nearly 1600%.

The chart below shows the world’s ten richest persons as on 31^st August 2022.

Source: Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index

Apart from Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani was also able to rank himself in the top 10 with a net worth of $94 billion on 31^st August. On 29^th August, Mukesh Ambani had ranked 11^th on the list but was able to escalate to the 9^th position two days later. Also, there isn’t much difference between the net worth of Gautam Adani and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as Gautam Adani’s net worth stands at $143 billion and Bezos’s wealth is currently at $152 billion which shows a difference of just $9 billion.