Gautam Adani becomes the world’s third richest person, the first Asian to reach the spot

With a net worth of $137.4 billion, he now trails behind Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.

Industrialist Gautam Adani has overtaken French billionaire Bernard Arnault to become the world’s third richest person, real-time data on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed on Tuesday. He is the first Asian to be among the three richest persons in the world, according to Bloomberg.

The 60-year-old founder of Adani Group controls companies ranging from ports and aerospace to thermal energy and coal. He is also trying to take a majority stake in one of the country’s biggest news networks NDTV.

The net worth of Adani stood at $137.4 billion (over Rs 10.9 lakh crore) and he now trails behind Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, according to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani is at number 11 with a total wealth of $91.9 billion (over Rs 7.3 lakh crore).

Last month, Adani overtook Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world’s fourth richest person, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list. It became possible after Gates, in July, said that he would transfer $20 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In February, Adani overtook Ambani to become Asia’s richest individual, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index ranking. Adani was worth $88.5 billion (approximately Rs 6.6 lakh crore) at that time.

The total market value of the Adani Group’s seven publicly traded companies – Adani Enterprises, Adani Wilmar, Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission, Adani Total Gas, Adani Power –has increased about ten-fold in three years to about $237 billion (nearly Rs 18.9 lakh crore), Reuters reported.

CreditSights, a debt-research unit of credit rating agency Fitch Group, had on August 23 said that the Adani Group is “deeply overleveraged” as the conglomerate has been investing aggressively across several businesses.

It added in a report that this expansion is being predominantly funded with debt that has put pressure on credit metrics and cash flow. In the worst-case scenario, Adani could fall into a debt trap and default, the report had warned.