Gautam Adani Becomes World's Second Richest Person, Surpasses Jeff Bezos

Billionaire Gautam Adani became second richest person in the world surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Adani has net worth of $147 billion and is next to the world's richest person and Tesla's founder Elon Musk who has net worth of $264 billion.

Bezos' net worth has declined $45.5 billion so far this year while Adani's wealth has jumped by $70.3 billion, data from Bloomberg showed.

Bezos net worth has declined since start of the year owing to sharp decline in tech heavy Nasdaq index which has crashed over 20 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.

Amazon has 7 per cent weightage in the Nasdaq index.

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

The Adani group on Friday said it completed the acquisition of Ambuja Cements & ACC Ltd and became country's second largest cement player.

Adani family, through their special purpose vehicle Endeavour Trade and Investment Ltd, completed the acquisition after completing the transaction with Swiss firm Holcim and an open offer, said a statement.

The value of the Holcim stake and open offer consideration for Ambuja Cements and ACC is $6.50 billion, which makes this the largest ever acquisition by Adani, and also India's largest ever merger and acquisition transaction in the infrastructure and materials space, it added.

Post the transaction, Adani will hold 63.15 per cent stake in Ambuja Cements and 56.69 per cent in ACC (of which 50.05 per cent is held through Ambuja Cements).

Adani has also pledged to invest $70 billion in green energy, in order to become the world’s largest renewable energy producer. 

In India, Adani is aggressively competing with Mukesh Ambani, the Chairman of Reliance Industries which is the country's most valuable company. 

Ambani has been ranked tenth on the list with net worth of $88.7 billion. Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates, with a net worth of $112 billion has been ranked as the 5th richest, whereas ace-investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway – Warren Buffett is ranked sixth richest with a net worth of $96 billion.