After briefly flirting with number 2 spot, Gautam Adani at $110 billion is ending the Calendar 2022 being the third richest on this planet, richest in India. Despite the fag-end weakness in Adani group shares, his wealth is up $33.80 billion, or $44.2 per cent this year, as per publicly available data with Bloomberg Billionaire index. He was the only billionaire among the elite group of top 10, whose fortunes rose in a year marked by sharp selloff in equities on fears of global recession.
In context, if Gautam Adani was a country, he would have been the 64th largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, based of 2021 IMF estimates, ahead of Puerto Rico and Ecuador.
The wealth added by Adani in 2022, in fact, was higher than the 2021 GDP at least of 85 world countries such as El Salvador Honduras, Cyprus El Salvador, Cambodia, Iceland, Yemen, Senegal and Cyprus.
The fortunes he added were higher than the market capitalisation of Pakistan Stock Exchange (at roughly $30 billion). Pakistan Stock Exchange’s market cap stood at PKR 64,09,47,32,80,070 (or 6,409.47 billion Pakistani rupee) as of December 26, as per the exchange’s daily market report. This, at the prevailing exchange rate, stood at $28.41 billion.
Besides, Adani’s wealth was one-fifth of India’s $563.50 billion forex reserves (as of December 16).
Adani, 60, has business interest in renewable energy, power transmission and distribution, transportation and logistics, airports and defence, among others.
Gautam Adani’s total fortunes hit $150 billion mark on September 20, before seeing some fall. He still stays ahead of its Reliance Group’s Mukesh Ambani, whose wealth stand at $85.4 billion, as per publicly available Bloomberg data.
Six Adani group stocks added a total Rs 6.78 lakh crore in market capitalistaion so far this calendar. Adani Wilmar, another group stock, which got listed on February 8 earlier this year, has seen its m-cap rising Rs 33, 720 crore to Rs 68,187.64 crore from Rs 34,467.48 crore on Day 1 of listing.
Shares of Adani Power have jumped 176 per cent to Rs 275.35 apiece on Monday from Rs 99.75 on December 31, 2021. Shares of Adani Enterprises have rallied 117.47 per cent; Adani Total Gas 93 per cent, Adani Transmission 42 per cent, Adani Green Energy 41 per cent and Adani Ports 10 per cent. Adani Wilmar is up 139 per cent over its IPO issue price of Rs 230.
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