Gautam Adani $3 Billion Away From Becoming World's Second Richest, Surpassing Jeff Bezos

The country's richest and world's third richest individual billionaire Gautam Adani is $3 billion away from surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become world's second richest individual a notch below world's richest person Elon Musk, data from Bloomberg Billionaires index showed.

Adani with net worth of $147 billion is currently the third on the list and Bezos with net worth of $150 billion is second on the list while the world's richest individual - Musk has net worth of $256 billion.

Bezos net worth has dropped by $42 billion since start of the year owing to sharp decline in tech heavy Nasdaq index which has crashed nearly 23 per cent year-to-date while surge in Adani's wealth has come on the back of fast pace of expansion being witnessed by his group companies. 

The group has expanded its business across several sectors including renewable energy, ports, telecom, cement and media.

Meanwhile, with yesterday's sharp fall in US markets fortunes of America's richest billionaires tumbled on Tuesday by $93 billion, the ninth-worst daily loss ever, as hotter-than-expected US inflation data roiled markets, Bloomberg reported.

Jeff Bezos's wealth plunged by $9.8 billion, the most among those tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Elon Musk's net worth dropped by $8.4 billion. The fortunes of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Steve Ballmer all declined by more than $4 billion, while Warren Buffett and Bill Gates lost $3.4 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively. 

The billionaires' large daily losses reflect the broad selloff in the US stock market, as investors bet that consumer price index data that came in higher than expected will cause the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more aggressively. The S&P 500 fell 4.4 per cent, the most since June 2020, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index tumbled 5.5 per cent, the most since a decline of more than 12 per cent in March 2020.