- Thursday, May 02, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
GAUTAM Adani has pipped Mukesh Ambani to become the richest man in Asia, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The 59-year-old mogul, who turned a small commodities trading business into a major conglomerate including ports, mines and green energy, has seen his net worth touching $88.5 billion (£65.3 billion) on Monday (7), the BBI showed, while his compatriot Ambani’s net worth was $87.9 billion (£64.8 billion).
Adani also saw an almost $12 billion (£8.8 billion) jump in his personal fortune to become the world’s biggest weather-gainer this year, it added.
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Adani, whose controversial coal mine project in Australia received a backlash from climate activists including Greta Thunberg, has looked beyond the fossil fuel and moved into renewable energy, airports, data centres and defence contracting – things that the current Indian leadership considers key to nation-building and meeting its long-term economic targets.
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The strategy paid off for the Adani Group.
“The Adani Group has spotted and entered all the happening sectors at the right time, which has appealed to a select band of foreign portfolio investors,” Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at Mumbai-based brokerage HDFC Securities Ltd, told Bloomberg.
“The sectors are capital-intensive and the company has faced little difficulty in raising funds to expand,” he added.
Some of the conglomerate’s listed stocks have gone up by more than 600 per cent in the past two years, justifying Adani’s forays into green energy and infrastructure as prime minister Narendra Modi looks to revive the $2.9-trillion (£2.1 trillion) economy plan and meet India’s carbon net-zero target by 2070.
MSCI Inc.’s decision to include more Adani companies in its Indian benchmark index also meant any fund tracking the gauge will have to buy the shares, Bloomberg added.
The year 2020 was that of Ambani with his oil-to-petrochemicals conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. creating billions of dollars in wealth through a technology pivot that even brought in global tech giants Facebook and Google as investors. But since then, it is Adani who has been on the upward curve.
Both Indian billionaires who have erected their respective empires on fossil fuels of coal are now backing green energy products. Ambani has committed $10 billion (£7.3 billion) over the next three years as part of a larger $76 billion (£56 billion) plan in renewable energy. Adani, on the other hand, has pledged to invest $70 billion (£51.6 billion) in another eight years to help his group become the largest renewable-energy producer in the world.
Adani has also unveiled plans to boost his renewable-energy capacity almost eight times by 2025. In May last year, Adani Green agreed to buy SoftBank Group Corp.’s local renewable-power business in a deal that gave SB Energy India an enterprise value of $3.5 billion (£2.5 billion).
Adani has also been accused of being close to the power centres. The political opponents of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have targeted Adani over his alleged proximity to the powerful leader. Adani has dismissed such criticism as baseless and has focused on dovetailing his investments with the prime minister’s vision.
