Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani has achieved a remarkable milestone amid the Covid-19 pandemic, as he added the highest wealth to his fortune in the world, as per the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that so far in 2021, Adani has added $16.2 billion, taking his total net worth to $50 billion. With this surge in his wealth, Adani is now the 26th richest person in the world.
Even though he’s not in the club of the 25 richest people on the planet, Gautam Adani has managed to ‘outgrow’ fellow billionaires, including the two richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, by seeing his net worth ballooning the most in 2021. While Adani has added $16.2 billion to his wealth since the start of this year, Amazon’s Bezos has seen his wealth shrink by $7.59 billion to $183 billion while Tesla’s Musk added $10.3 billion to reach $180 billion, as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The development comes at a time when the Adani Group is rapidly expanding its footprint in diversified sectors, including airports business and data centres. Recently, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited announced that Windy Lakeside Investment Ltd, a unit of Warburg Pincus, will invest Rs 800 crore for a 0.49 per cent stake in the company.
Shares of several Adani companies have surged over the past one year amid the pandemic, adding to its Chairman’s wealth. Adani Enterprises’ shares have increased over four-fold in the past one year and the stock price of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone has more than double during the period.
Google Co-founder Larry Page is ranked second in terms of highest gain in wealth with a growth of $14.3 billion. Amazon Inc Founder Jeff Bezos is the richest person on the planet with a net worth of $183 billion, followed by Elon Musk with a net worth of $180 billion.
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the 10th richest person in the world with a net worth of $84.8 billion. So far in 2021, he has added $8.05 billion of wealth. (IANS)
Adani’s fattening wallet has been on account of a surge in investor interest in his companies across sectors such as ports, power plants, renewable power, airports, data centres and coal mines. Except for one company, all his other companies have seen their share prices appreciate by over 50% this year — the odd one out being Adani Green Energy, whose 12% rise in 2021 gets dwarfed by the 500% rise in its value in 2020.
Known to be media shy, the self made first generation billionaire is also not a stranger to controversies. His Carmichael coal mine project in Australia has been the object of disaffection of environmentalists for fear of damage to the ecology and the company was renamed last year as Bravus Mining and Resources in order to distance itself from the Adani brand name.
