Gautam Adani Overtakes Mukesh Ambani As Asia's Richest Person

Gautam Adani's net worth reached $88.5 billion on Monday, eclipsing Mukesh Ambani’s $87.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Gautam Adani (59) is now the world’s biggest wealth-gainer this year, with around $12 billion jump in his personal fortune. Image: File Photo

New Delhi: Billionaire Gautam Adani has become Asia’s richest person.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the coal magnet’s net worth reached $88.5 billion on Monday, eclipsing Mukesh Ambani’s $87.9 billion. Adani (59) is now the world’s biggest wealth-gainer this year, with around $12 billion jump in his personal fortune.

Gautam Adani has increasingly looked beyond the fossil fuel for expansion and is moving into renewable energy, airports, data centers, and defense contracting.

If 2020 was Ambani’s year when Reliance Industries created billions of dollars in wealth through a technology pivot that brought in Facebook and Google as investors, the pendulum has now since swung toward Adani.

“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,” said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at Mumbai-based brokerage HDFC Securities Ltd, according to Bloomberg. “The sectors are capital-intensive and the company has faced little difficulty in raising funds to expand.”

Some of Adani Group’s listed stocks have soared more than 600 per cent in the past two years on bets his push into green energy and infrastructure will pay off as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks to revive the $2.9-trillion economy and meet the India’s carbon net-zero target by 2070.

MSCI Inc.’s decision to include more Adani companies in its Indian benchmark index has also meant any fund tracking the gauge will have to buy the shares.

According to a Bloomberg report, both Ambani and Adani, who have built their empires on fossil fuels or coal, are now pushing ahead with green energy projects. Ambani has committed $10 billion over the next three years as part of a larger $76 billion spend plan in renewables.

Adani has pledged to invest a total of $70 billion by 2030 to help his group become the world’s largest renewable-energy producer.

Companies, including Total SE and Warburg Pincus have invested in Adani’s companies in 2021. The French oil giant agreed in January 2021 to buy 20 per cent of Adani Green Energy and a 50 per cent stake in the Indian partner’s portfolio of operating solar assets, though at a steep discount. The deal value was just $2.5 billion, compared with Adani Green’s market capitalisation of $20 billion at the time.

Within a span of 3 years, Adani has gained control of seven airports and almost a quarter of India’s air traffic. His group owns the country’s largest airport operator, power generator, and city gas retailer in the non-state sector.

Shares of Adani Green and Adani Total Gas, a Mumbai-listed joint venture with the French firm, have rallied more than 1,000 per cent since the beginning of 2020. Flagship Adani Enterprises has gained more than 730 per cent, Adani Transmission more than 500 per cent, and Adani Ports 95 per cent over this period. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex Index has gained 40 per cent by comparison.