Gautam Adani Becomes World's Second Richest Person, Behind Elon Musk

NEW DELHI: Indian Billionaire Gautam Adani, of Adani Group, on Friday briefly surpassed French business magnate Bernard Arnault to become the world's second richest person, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List.

Adani and his family's net worth surged to $155.4 billion, surpassing that of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, co-founder, chairman, CEO Arnault, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. Adani is now just behind Tesla chief Elon Musk whose net worth stands at $273.5 billion.

In the Forbes billionaires' list, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is at number three with a net worth of $149.7 billion, followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates ($105.3 billion), Larry Ellison ($98.3 billion) and ace Wall Street investor Warren Buffet ($96.5 billion).

There are now two Indians in the top 10 in the Forbes list with Mukesh Ambani ranked 8th with a fortune of $92.2 billion.

Only last month, Adani surpassed Gates to become the world's third-richest person. The jump in Adani's ranking in the Forbes is a result of the massive surge in his fortune due to Adani Group shares rallying this year. Except Adani and Musk, all the other billionaires in the top 10 saw a decline in their net worth on Friday.

Adani's fortune increased by nearly $5 billion today, while Anault's net worth slipped 1.97% by $3.1 billion. Adani's climbing the ranks is attributed to the surge in Adani Group stocks in the recent past. Adani Enterprises, Adani Port and Adani Transmission stocks hit their record highs on the BSE, leading to a surge in the group chairman's real time net worth, in early deals on Friday.

Over the past five years, Adani Enterprises has invested heavily in new growth sectors including airports, cement, copper refining, data centres, green hydrogen, petrochemical refining, roads and solar cell manufacturing.

It also plans to foray into the telecom space and has massive plans to grow its green hydrogen and airports businesses.

The Adani group is already operating the Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International (LGBI) airport in Guwahati.

Adani Group is also reported to have committed $70 billion for green energy infrastructure.

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