Industrialist Gautam Adani, who founded the ports-to-green energy Adani Group, last week broke into the top three in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, trailing only Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
Adani group has expanded to become one of the world’s largest conglomerates. The group now owns India’s largest airport operator and largest private-sector port, It is also into city-gas distributor and coal miner.
Gautam Adani is founder of Adani Group, is a first-generation entrepreneur , has now risen to become the world’s third-richest individual. According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Gautam Adani’s wealth stood at $141 billion on Friday. There has been a phenomenal growth of his wealth. Adani’s wealth was less than $10 billion when covid-19 first became a global phenomenon in March 2020.
Key Highlights :
# Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone is India’s biggest private port operator, with its 13 ports and terminals dotting both eastern and western coastlines.
# Adani Enterprises is India’s biggest coal trader, the biggest coal mining contractor as well the biggest private airport operator, with eight airports in its kitty.
# Adani Green Energy is one of the world’s largest solar power developers, Adani Transmission is the largest private sector transmission and distribution company in India and Adani Wilmar is the country’s biggest edible oils brand.
# Adani Total Gas operates the largest city gas distribution business in India and finally, Adani Power is the largest private thermal power producer in India.
# The infrastructure empire is also present in solar manufacturing, logistics, industrial land, defence and aerospace, fruits, data centres, road and rail, real estate and lending.
Gautam Adani, the richest person in India, went from being a college dropout to building a nearly $200 billion empire. At the same time, the Gautam Adani-led Group has seen its debt levels increase over the past five years from Rs 1 trillion to Rs 2.6 trillion.
Analysts at Credit Suisse noted that while the gross debt levels may have risen, the group has managed to diversify its debt in favour of bonds and financial institution (FI) lenders with longer maturity tenors
Mr. Adani added $60.9 billion to his fortune in 2022 alone, five times more than anyone else. He first overtook Mukesh Ambani as the richest Asian in February, and then surpassed Microsoft Corporation’s Bill Gates as the world’s fourth-richest person last month.
The report also cited CreditSights as saying this month that the Adani Group’s growth has been predominantly funded with debt and his empire is “deeply over-leveraged.” “Some lawmakers and market watchers have also raised concerns over opaque shareholder structures and a lack of analyst coverage at Adani Group companies,” it said.
Adani Enterprises ventures into media with AMG Media Network. AMG Media Network will aim to carry on the business of media related activities, including inter alia the publishing, advertising, broadcasting, distributing and others. Adani had also announced a minority stake in Quintillion Business Media Private Limited (“QBM”), an indirect subsidiary of Quint Digital.
Recently, Adanis’s recent attempt a hostile takeover of New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV). New Delhi Television Ltd. said the Adani Group, will need approval from India’s markets regulator for its hostile takeover bid, amid wider concerns that the acquisition may muzzle the country’s independent press. With NDTV, Adani want to join the league of the likes of Jeff Bezos , who owns the Washington Post and the Murdoch family that runs Fox Corporation.
