While most of the top richest people in the world have seen their fortunes dip over the last several months, no one has seen their fortune grow quite as much as Indian businessman Gautam Adani. Not only is Adani now the richest person in Asia and the first person from that continent to crack the barrier into the top three richest people on Earth, but his wealth has now finally surpassed that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, making him currently the second richest person on the planet.
Adani has had an incredible year in the business world. At the beginning of the year, his net worth was a comfortable $75 billion, which was enough to make him the 13th richest person in the world. But since then, his wealth has almost doubled to the figure of almost $147 billion as of this writing. That makes him the second richest person in the world, surpassing Jeff Bezos, as it was already predicted he was on the verge of doing earlier this month.
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Most of Adani’s fortune is tied up in his flagship corporation Adani Enterprises Ltd., which has seen its stock prices surge to new heights even as other companies struggle in a volatile world economy. That, combined with Bezos’s own stock in Amazon sinking on the stock market, has produced the shake-up on the list of the world’s richest people, and now only Elon Musk is wealthier than Adani. Of course, Adani still has another $100 billion or so to add to his net worth if he wants to unseat Musk as the world’s richest person, so if he’s competitive at all in this area he’ll have to be patient as well.
Adani Enterprises Ltd. and many other companies fall under the umbrella of the Adani Group, a conglomerate founded by Adani himself. Many of its holdings are in the energy sector, including power plants and coal mines. Adani reportedly holds 75 percent of Adani Enterprises stock, having founded that company in 1988 – which is why he’s in such a position to benefit now from its recent stock market spikes.