After a roller-coaster ride on the wealth rankings last year, Gautam Adani is back to being Asia’s wealthiest person days after India’s top court said no new probes were needed into Hindenburg Research’s bombshell allegations against the tycoon’s conglomerate.
Adani’s net worth rose $7.7 billion in a day to $97.6 billion, reclaiming the top spot in the region from Indian compatriot Mukesh Ambani, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, was trailing by a narrow margin with a net worth of $97 billion, the index shows.
The comeback of the first-generation entrepreneur, who started off as a diamond trader in the 1980s, caps an eventful year for Adani’s ports-to-power conglomerate. Despite denying Hindenburg’s allegations of corporate fraud, the Adani Group lost more than $150 billion in market value at one point last year and spent months wooing back investors, lenders, repaying debt and assuaging regulatory concerns.
Adani Group’s stocks rallied after Supreme Court of India this week ordered the local markets regulator to conclude its investigation into the conglomerate within three months and said no more probes were needed, effectively drawing a line under the year-long short-seller saga.
The court reprieve stoked a $13.3 billion wealth gain for Adani — world’s largest this year — after logging one of the world’s largest wealth losses in 2023.
Adani, whose conglomerate has committed an investment pf $100 billion over the next decade for green transition across its businesses, is also back to rapidly diversifying his empire beyond his coal trading origins into data centers, artificial intelligence, urban development, airports and media.
Adani’s jump in wealth — the world’s largest this year, according to the index — comes almost 12 months after his ports-to-power conglomerate was accused by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.”
As a result of the scrutiny that followed those accusations, Adani’s fortune, which in September 2022 was worth more than that of Jeff Bezos, saw a stunning fall. At one point, the businessman lost over $80 billion following Hindenburg’s release of the report in January 2023.
His net worth recovered somewhat in the months that followed. At the end of last year, the Bloomberg index put his wealth at a healthy $84.3 billion, but that was still over 40% below the September 2022 level.
In its investigation, which Hindenburg said took two years to compile, the American firm had questioned the “sky-high valuations” of Adani companies and said their “substantial debt” put the entire group “on a precarious financial footing.” Short-sellers make money by betting that a company’s stock will fall.
The Adani Group published a 400-page rebuttal, calling the Hindenburg analysis “nothing but a lie.” But that did not prevent the stock market meltdown early last year, which hammered the conglomerate’s market value and Adani’s personal fortune. The country’s market regulator also launched a probe into the group.
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