Industrialist Gautam Adani has overtaken French billionaire Bernard Arnault to become the world’s third-richest person, real-time data on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed on Tuesday. He is the first Asian to be among the three richest persons in the world, according to Bloomberg.
Adani’s net worth stands at $137.4 billion (over Rs 10.9 lakh crore). The two persons ahead of him in terms of total wealth are Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The 60-year-old founder of Adani Group controls companies ranging from ports and aerospace to thermal energy and coal. He has been in the headlines most recently because of the Adani Group’s attempt to take a majority stake in one of the country’s biggest news networks NDTV.
India’s second-richest man, Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani, is at number 11 in the world rankings, with total wealth of $91.9 billion (over Rs 7.3 lakh crore).
Last month, Adani overtook Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world’s fourth-richest person, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list. It became possible after Gates, in July, said that he would transfer $20 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In February, Adani overtook Ambani to become Asia’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index ranking. Adani was worth $88.5 billion (approximately Rs 6.6 lakh crore) at that time.
The total market value of the Adani Group’s seven publicly traded companies – Adani Enterprises, Adani Wilmar, Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission, Adani Total Gas, Adani Power – has increased about ten-fold in three years to about $237 billion (nearly Rs 18.9 lakh crore), Reuters reported.
CreditSights, a debt-research unit of credit rating agency Fitch Group, had on August 23 said that the Adani Group is “deeply overleveraged” as the conglomerate has been investing aggressively in several businesses.
It added in a report that this expansion is being predominantly funded with debt that has put pressure on credit metrics and cash flow. In the worst-case scenario, Adani could fall into a debt trap and default, the report had warned.
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