New Delhi: Indian billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani is now the third richest person in the world, according to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires data.
60-year-old Adani has overtaken France’s Bernard Arnault and now trails just Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos of the US in the ranking.
While Telsa chief Musk has a net worth of $251 billion, Amazon founder and CEO of Amazon – Jeff Bezos – has a total worth of $153 billion.
It’s the first time an Asian person has broken into the top three of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — fellow citizen Mukesh Ambani and China’s Jack Ma never made it that far.
Adani, a college dropout who first tried his luck as a diamond trader before turning to coal, has spent the past few years expanding his coal-to-ports conglomerate, venturing into everything from data centres 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 criticised by environmentalists, it pledged in November to invest $70 billion in green energy to become the world’s largest renewable-energy producer.
As his empire has expanded to one of the world’s largest conglomerates fuelling the remarkable wealth gains, concerns have grown over the rapid growth.
Adani’s deals spree has been predominantly funded with debt and his empire is “deeply over-leveraged,” CreditSights said in a report this month.