Gautam Adani's rise to 3rd richest came as stock jump topped 1,000%

First, Gautam Adani became the richest person in Asia. Then his net worth surpassed those of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Now he's approaching a level of wealth only rivaled by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. 

During a year in which many fortunes around the world have crumbled, his net worth has nearly doubled, increasing $64.8 billion to $141.4 billion and making him the third-richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.      

His surging fortune is due in part to the jump in oil and natural gas prices, which has lifted the MSCI World/Energy Index to a 36% total return in 2022, compared with an 18.4% loss for the broader gauge of global stocks. But even in a period of big gains across the industry, Adani’s firms stand out above the rest, with some share prices more than doubling this year. It’s attracting fresh scrutiny to the valuations of his companies, the leverage embedded throughout his business empire and his ties to India’s government.

His Adani Green Energy Ltd. and Adani Total Gas Ltd. trade at more than 750 times profit, while Adani Enterprises Ltd. and Adani Transmission Ltd. have valuations north of 400 times. By comparison, Musk’s Tesla Inc. and Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. have price-to-earnings ratios of about 100, while fellow Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. trades at 28 times.