Gautam Adani’s fortunes have suffered a severe setback on concerns over corporate governance and accounting fraud, leading to Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani replacing the Ahmedabad-based industrialist as the richest Indian.
Adani lost Rs 3,000 crore of wealth every week over the last year and his overall networth is down 60 per cent from its peak, as per the M3M Hurun Global Rich List, which pegged Adani’s overall fortune at USD 53 billion as of mid-March. Ambani also suffered a decline in his fortune but could displace Adani as the richest Indian as his networth declined by 20 per cent to USD 82 billion. Earlier, US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report accusing the Adani group of large-scale accounting fraud and stock manipulation, leading to serious concerns and a free fall in Adani group companies’ share prices. The Gautam Adani-led conglomerate has denied these allegations.
Both Adani and Ambani have slipped down the global billionaires rankings because of the decline in wealth, with the former going down 11 places from the peak to be the 23rd richest in the world and the latter coming down to being the ninth richest in the world. However, from a 10-year perspective, both have seen a massive rise in fortunes, with Adani’s networth rising 1,225 per cent, and Ambani’s being up by 356 per cent, the report said. There are 187 dollar billionaires residing in India, which is up by 15 over the last year, and the financial capital Mumbai is home to the largest number of them at 66. If one has to look at the number of people of Indian origin globally, there are 217 billionaires, it said.
The report said India accounts for 5 per cent of the overall billionaire wealth in the world against 32 per cent of the US. China is home to the highest number of billionaires in the world, which is five times of India. Indian billionaires lead sectoral lists like Cyrus Poonawala of Pune’s Serum Institute being the wealthiest in the healthcare sector with USD 27 billion. Similarly, Ashwin Dani’s family of Asian Paints is the richest entrepreneur in his sector with a wealth of USD 7.1 billion, and the USD 3.3 billion wealth making Byju Raveendran the wealthiest education entrepreneur.
India is home to 10 women billionaires, and Radha Vembu is the second richest self-made woman billionaire in the world from the software and services sector with a wealth of USD 4 billion, the Hurun report said.
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