Companies
Adani only one among the 10 richest to see net worth rise
Summary
- Adani has gained more this year ($60.9 billion) than any other billionaire on the top 500 list.
Business tycoon Gautam Adani, who became the third-richest person in the world on Tuesday, is also the only one among the world’s 10 wealthiest people to have seen his net worth increase this year, a Mint analysis of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed.
With a net worth of $137.4 billion, Adani surpassed Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault when the index was updated after the closing of US trading hours on Monday.
At the start of the year, Adani’s net worth was $76.1 billion, ranking him the 15th richest globally. The bulk of Adani’s fortune comes from the stakes held in publicly traded companies by the group he founded.
Adani has gained more this year ($60.9 billion) than any other billionaire on the top 500 list. His gain exceeds the net worth of all but 18 individuals.
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The next biggest gainer was Swiss entrepreneur Guillaume Pousaz, who added $11.7 billion to his net worth in the same period.
As of Tuesday, as many as 392 of the top 500 billionaires saw their net worth drop because of the sharp correction in shares for much of this year amid red-hot inflation, reversal of easy monetary policies, the Russia-Ukraine war, and fears of an imminent recession.
India had 18 billionaires in the top 500, out of whom only two apart from Adani—Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani and former Eicher Motors top boss Vikram Lal, ranked 11 and 368—saw their net worth rise this year.
While Ambani’s net worth rose by $1.96 billion or 2%, the year-to-date change was $832 million or 15% for Lal.
Wipro founder Azim Premji saw the sharpest drop in net worth among Indian billionaires, both in absolute and percentage terms: $16 billion, or 39% of his net worth this year. This was followed by HCL Technologies’ Shiv Nadar, whose net worth eroded by $9.9 billion or 30%. Savitri Jindal, the only Indian woman billionaire on the list, lost 5% of her net worth.
Tech stocks have been a major loser this year on fears of a recession in Western markets, to which these companies cater.
Cyrus Poonawalla, the toast of the corporate circuit through the covid pandemic with the mass deployment of the Covishield vaccine as part of vaccine rollout in India, saw $3.7 billion shaved off his net worth.
The net worth is calculated based on public information such as dividend income, share sales and the value of shareholdings in companies and fluctuates daily with the stock market.
The combined net worth of the top 500 billionaires has dropped 14% this year so far, but the gains made by Adani and Ambani have led Indians on the list to post a 4% increase. However, billionaires’ fortunes are no longer declining as fast: the global top 500 has lost just 1% in the last three months, with the 18 Indians gaining 7%.
The net worth of billionaires in the US saw little change in this period, while those in Canada saw the most significant rise at 13% between May and August. The US added six billionaires in this period, while China saw a gain of five billionaires.
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