Billionaire Gautam Adani becomes Asia’s richest person
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Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire who turned a small commodities trading business into a conglomerate spanning ports, mines and green energy, is now Asia's richest person.
The 59-year-old mogul's net worth reached $88.5 billion on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eclipsing fellow countryman Mukesh Ambani's $87.9 billion.
He's moving into renewable energy, airports, data centers and defense contracting -- priorities Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also considers crucial to nation-building and meeting the country's long-term economic goals.
"The Adani Group has spotted and entered all the happening sectors at the right time, which has appealed to a select band of foreign portfolio investors," said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at Mumbai-based brokerage HDFC Securities Ltd. "The sectors are capital-intensive and the company has faced little difficulty in raising funds to expand."
Many of Adani Group's listed stocks have soared more than 600% in the past two years on bets his push into green energy and infrastructure will pay off as Modi looks to revive the $2.9 trillion economy and meet the India's carbon net-zero target by 2070.