Gautam Adani overtakes Jeff Bezos to become world's second richest

Gautam Adani's wealth surged to make him the second richest man in the world, led by a sharp rally in the Adani Group stocks.

Adani Group's Chairperson and Indian billionare Gautam Adani surpassed Amazon's Jeff Bezos to become the world's second richest person. He is now only behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who remains the world's richest man with a networth of $273.5 billion, according to Forbes' real time data, LiveMint reported. 

Adani's wealth surged to make him the second richest man in the world, led by a sharp rally in the Adani Group stocks. According to the Forbes real-time billionaires list, Adani's net worth stood at $155.7 billion as of September 16, 2022, up $5.5 billion or nearly 4%.

As the Adani Group stocks of Adani Enterprises, Adani Port and Adani Transmission hit their record highs on the BSE in Friday's early deals, Gautam Adani's real time net worth reflected the stock market surge. 

The Adani Group chairman has added more than $70 billion to his fortune in 2022 (YTD). In February, he overtook Mukesh Ambani as the richest Asian, became a centibillionaire in April and left behind Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world’s fourth-richest person last month.

The Ahmedabad-based infrastructure group is the largest port operator in India. The group also owns India's largest closely held thermal coal producer and largest coal trader. Adani Enterprises reported revenue of $5.3 billion in the year to March 31, 2021. 

Gautam Adani wants to be the world's largest producer of green energy and earlier said that he would invest upto $70 billion on renewable energy projects. 

Currently, he is a 75% stakeowner in Adani Enterprises, Adani Power and Adani Transmissions, according to March 2022 stock exchange filings. He also owns 37% of Adani Total Gas, 65% of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone and 61% of Adani Green Energy.

Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani is at eighth place with a net worth of $92.3 billion