Indian Gautam Adani becomes world’s third richest man
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The Bloomberg index ranks the Indian industrialist just behind the Americans Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. This is the first time that an Asian has made it to the top three in the rankings.
The Indian industrialist Gautam Adani became the world’s third-richest person on Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, marking the first time an Asian has made the top three. The self-made billionaire more than doubled his fortune to $137.4 billion last year, ranking him just behind Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the Bloomberg Index, after jumping 20 places.
Gautam Adani, 60, made his fortune in ports and commodity trading and now runs India’s third-largest conglomerate with interests ranging from coal mining and edible oils to airports and media. The price of the Adani Enterprises group, of which the billionaire owns 75%, has increased by more than 2,400% since March 2020 and has doubled in value in the past six months. The surge in the share price of other companies in the group, such as Adani Transmission, Adani Power, Adani Ports and Adani Green Energy, allowed Gautam Adani’s fortune to exceed that of his fellow billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
A growing empire
Born in the city of Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat to a middle-class family, Gautam Adani dropped out of school to work briefly in the diamond industry before starting his export business in 1988. 1995, Gautam Adani, who was diversifying, won the contract to build and operate the commercial port of Mundra, Gujarat, which has since become the largest in India. At the same time, Gautam Adani ventured into thermal power generation and coal mining in India and abroad. In recent years, the conglomerate has forayed into petrochemicals, cement, data centers and copper refining, in addition to building a renewable energy company with ambitious goals.
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With recent investments in Indian media and a bid for 5G this year, his expanding empire looked set to encroach on Gautam Adani’s Reliance Industries flowerbeds. But Fitch Group’s CreditSights last week warned Gautam Adani’s group was “deeply over-indebted“. “In the worst case, overambitious debt-financed growth plans could end up turning into a colossal debt trap, and eventually ending in distress or default.“, judged the study firm in a note.
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