Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault climbed to the second spot on the Forbes Billionaires List, pipping Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who had briefly claimed the No.2 position. India’s Gautam Adani has slipped to the fourth spot.
The Forbes Billionaires List is witnessing a neck-to-neck fight between the three tycoons to claim the second spot as there is a marginal difference in the fortunes of the trio.
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The 73-year-old fashion accessory brand CEO has a wealth of $141.2 billion ( ₹11.54 lakh crore) against Bezos’ net worth of $141.4 billion ( ₹11.56 lakh crore).
Adani, who is the richest Asian, saw his wealth drop by $5.7 billion and has a net worth of $134.2 billion ( ₹10.97 lakh crore). The richest man on the planet continues to be Tesla CEO Elon Musk with a fortune of a whopping $263.2 billion ( ₹21.52 lakh crore). He had briefly held on to the second spot in recent days before being surpassed by Bezos and Arnault.
Adani’s loss of wealth may be attributed to the turbulent stock market in India and abroad, this after the Federal Reserve hiked the rate of interest in a bid to tame inflation. The 60-year-old tycoon has said his business conglomerate Adani Group will invest more than $100 billion over the next decade, a majority of it in the energy transition business. His business group has ventured into multiple sectors, mainly in the infrastructure space.
The Adani Group recently acquired cement firms Ambuja Cements and ACC Limited and has set its sight on becoming the largest cement manufacturer in the country. Besides this, the business conglomerate’s Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, recently got selected to develop the Tajpur deep sea port in West Bengal, Bloomberg reported. The greenfield project will entail a total investment of 250 billion rupees ($3.1 billion), of which 150 billion rupees will go toward port development and the rest toward building related infrastructure.
(With Reuters, Bloomberg inputs)
