Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani has once again regained the spot as Asia’s richest person in the Forbes Billionaire 2023 list, after rival Gautam Adani tumbled to No. 24. The list was released on Tuesday.
Adani was the world’s third-richest person on January 24 with a personal net worth of nearly $126 billion when allegations of ‘brazen stock manipulation’ and ‘massive accounting fraud’ by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research sent his companies’ shares plummeting.
His net worth is now $47.2 billion and is the second richest Indian behind Ambani.
With a net worth of $83.4 billion, Ambani, 65, was ranked at No. 9 on the world billionaire list, PTI reported.
“Last year, Ambani’s oil-to-telecom behemoth Reliance Industries became the first Indian company to surpass $100 billion in revenue,” Forbes said.
Global billionaires list
With a $211 billion net worth, Bernard Arnault, the French luxury goods tycoon, topped the list for the first time on the back of a banner year at LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co., among others.
Last year’s No.1 Elon Musk now dropped to the No. 2 rank, with $180 billion net worth, followed by Jeff Bezos with $114 billion net worth.
According to Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list, the 25 richest people in the world are worth a collective $2.1 trillion, down a combined $200 billion from $2.3 trillion in 2022.
“Two-thirds of the top 25 are poorer than they were last year, compared to around half of the list overall,” it said.
No one lost more than Jeff Bezos as Amazon shares crashed by 38 percent. The drop lopped $57 billion from Bezos’ fortune and knocked him from No. 2 in the world in 2022 to No. 3 this year.
This year’s second-biggest loser, Elon Musk, had it worse. He lost his title of the world’s richest person after his pricey purchase of Twitter, which he funded in part by the sale of Tesla shares, helping to spook investors.
India’s billionaires
There are a record number of Indians on Forbes’ 2023 list of the World’s Billionaires – 169 in all, up from 166 last year.
“But their combined wealth faced a reality check, dropping 10 percent to $675 billion, from $750 billion on the 2022 list,” Forbes said.
Among the newcomers is the youngest Indian billionaire, 36-year-old Nikhil Kamath, who co-founded discount brokerage Zerodha with his older sibling Nithin Kamath (also a newcomer). The Bengaluru brothers are worth $1.1 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively.
Four people returned to the list this year after previously falling off, including Keshub Mahindra, chairman emeritus of Mahindra & Mahindra.
The 99 year-old patriarch is the oldest Indian billionaire and has a net worth of $1.2 billion.
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