Gautam Adani overtakes Mukesh Ambani as Asia's richest person
Gautam Adani, Indian billionaire and the chairperson of the Adani Group, has become the richest person in Asia, according to figures from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His net worth touched $88.5 billion on Monday, surpassing fellow billionaire Mukesh Ambani's $87.9 billion, Bloomberg reported. With close to $12 billion jump in his personal fortune, he is also the world's biggest wealth-gainer this year.
Adani is now the world's 10th richest person. Reportedly, some of his group's stocks have registered over 600% growth over the past two years. Prominent firms, including Total SE and Warburg Pincus, invested in Adani's companies through the last year. Further, in just a span of three years, Adani Group has taken control of seven airports and nearly a quarter of India's air traffic.
In recent years, Adani has shifted his focus from fossil fuel to green energy products. He has committed a whopping $76 billion expenditure plan in renewables, of which $10 billion would be utilized over the next three years. The billionaire also has plans to multiply his group's renewable-energy capacity almost eight times by 2025 as part of the green push.
"The Adani Group has spotted and entered all the happening sectors at the right time, which has appealed to a select band of foreign portfolio investors," Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at HDFC Securities Limited, told Bloomberg. "The sectors are capital-intensive and the company has faced little difficulty in raising funds to expand," Jasani added.
Adani has been at the center of a controversy over the Carmichael mine project in Australia. The project has been facing fierce resistance from a coalition of climate activists, biodiversity conservationists, and Indigenous groups. The dispute has been marked by on-site protests, legal battles, as well as allegations of private investigators hired by the company to spy on the family of activists.
India's opposition leaders and critics of the government have time and again accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having supported Adani's growth. The billionaire, however, has rejected the allegations and credits his success to a strategy of aligning his investments with the PM's policies.
