Adani: A month on, Adani drops from 3rd to 38th in rich list – Times of India

MUMBAI: Gautam Adani is now placed at the 38th spot in the Forbes rich list, a far cry from the third position just before the Hindenburg report was published, which impacted his group’s stock prices. Currently, Adani’s net worth is estimated at $33.4 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time tracker, which is an erosion of over $85 billion from $119 billion before the report was published on January 24.
However, Bloomberg Billionaires Index, another widely followed global rich list, places Adani at the 30th position with a net worth of nearly $40 billion. A significant part of his net worth stems from his holding in the Adani Group, which he chairs. In a little over one month since Hindenburg published the report that has, among others, questioned the group accounting, the conglomerate’s combined net worth had eroded by nearly $150 billion, BSE data showed.

Mukesh Ambani, with a net worth of $84.3 billion, is at the eighth place on the Forbes rich list. Ambani chairs Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil & gas, telecom and retail.
In its January 24 report, Hindenburg alleged accounting fraud, stock price manipulation and improper use of offshore shell entities in tax havens by Adani, triggering a massive fall in his companies’ share prices. Adani has denied any wrongdoing.

Most of Adani’s fortune stems from infrastructure, where he has presence in ports, airports, roads and rails. Following the Hindenburg report, the 60-year-old first-generation entrepreneur cancelled his flagship Adani Enterprises’s Rs 20,000-crore follow-on public offering (FPO), abandoned a Rs 7,017-crore buyout of DB Power by group arm Adani Power and the situation has snowballed into a political issue in the country.
Since January 25, the business tycoon, who started as a commodities trader in 1988, has been repairing the damage caused by the Hindenburg report by turning his focus on preserving cash, retiring liabilities, recovering pledged shares and scaling down capital expenditure plans.