This is the first time an Asian person has broken into the top three of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index – fellow citizens Mukesh Ambani and China’s Jack Ma have never made it so far.
With a net worth of $137.4 billion, Adani has overtaken France’s Bernard Arnault and is now behind US’s Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the rankings.
Adani, 60, has over the years expanded its coal-to-ports group into everything from data centers to cement, media and alumina.
The group now owns India’s largest private sector port and airport operator, city-gas distributor and coal miner. While its Carmichael mine in Australia has been criticized by environmentalists, it pledged in November to invest $70 billion in green energy to become the world’s largest renewable-energy producer.
As their empire expanded into one of the largest groups in the world, fostering remarkable wealth gains, concerns grew over rapid growth.
CreditSights said in a report this month that Adani’s spree of deals is primarily funded with debt and that its empire is “deeply leveraged”.
Some lawmakers and market watchers have also raised concerns over the opaque shareholder structures and the lack of analyst coverage in the Adani group companies.
Yet stocks have risen – some of them more than 1,000% since 2020, with valuations at 750 times earnings – as the tycoon focuses on areas that Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs to meet India’s long-term goals. considered important.
The green energy and infrastructure pivot has won investments from firms including Warburg Pincus and TotalEnergies SE, helping Adani enter areas previously dominated by US tech moguls. The coal boom in recent months has further accelerated their ascent.
All told, Adani added $60.9 billion to its fortune in 2022 alone, five times more than anyone else. He first overtook Ambani as the richest Asian in February, became a billionaire in April and overtook Microsoft Corp’s Bill Gates as the world’s fourth-richest person last month.
Adani has been able to outpace some of the world’s richest American billionaires partly because he has recently stepped up his philanthropy. Gates said in July he was transferring $20 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, while Warren Buffett has already donated more than $35 billion to charities.
Along with Gates’ ex-wife Melinda French Gates, the two started the Giving Pledge initiative in 2010, pledging to give the majority of their lives. Billions of dollars spent on philanthropy have pushed him down Bloomberg’s wealth rankings. Gates is now fifth and Buffett is sixth.
Adani has also increased its donations. On the occasion of his 60th birthday in June, he pledged to donate $7.7 billion to social causes.