Billionaire founder of Adani Group - Gautam Adani surpassed Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest maker of luxury goods, to become the world's third richest person. Gautam Adani with net worth of $143 billion is behind Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who have been ranked as 1st and 2nd richest individuals respectively, as per Bloomberg’s Billionaire’s Index.
Adani is $9 billion away from net worth of Bezos which currently stands at $152 billion according to the Bloomberg's index. Analysts say that given the sharp up move currently being witnessed by Adani Group shares, Adani can surpass Bezos to become world's second richest person but it will be tough task for him to become world's richest as Elon Musk, the richest individual has net worth of $247 billion which is $104 billion above Adani's net worth.
Over the past few years, the 60-year-old billionaire has expanded its business across several sectors including renewable energy, ports, telecom, and media. The credit rating agency, CreditSights has recently said that Adani’s empire is “deeply over-leveraged.” Two of his recent acquisition that has created much buzz is Adani Group’s hostile takeover of NDTV and Adani Group’s acquisition of ACC Cements and Ambuja Cements from Holcim.
Notably, in order to expand his portfolio across renewable energy, Adani has also pledged to invest $70 billion in green energy, in order to become the world’s largest renewable energy producer.
In India, Adani is aggressively competing with Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Industries which is the country's most valuable company.
Ambani has been ranked as the 11th richest billionaire with a net worth of $91.9 billion. Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates, with a net worth of $117 billion has been ranked as the 5th richest billionaire, whereas acre-investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathway have been ranked as the 6th richest billionaire with a net worth of $100 billion.
