Billionaire Gautam Adani's wealth up relative to India's GDP, shows data

He was the only one in the top-5 billionaire who did not see a wealth decline over the last year

Amid increasing volatility and recession fears looming over global markets that has led to the decline in wealth of a number of billionaires, Gautam Adani was the only one to buck the trend. The billionaire added $43.3 billion in net worth between Diwali 2021 (November 4) and this year’s Diwali (October 24) according to Bloomberg data. He added more wealth than the gross domestic product (GDP)of more than a dozen Indian states.

The rise in his wealth exceeds the total pre-pandemic GDP of 14 Indian states and union territories.

States whose 2018-19 GDP was lower than Adani’s wealth gain includes Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Tripura, Chandigarh, Puducherry, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

He was the only one in the top five billionaires list who added wealth in the period under consideration. Others in the top five lost an average of 27.3 per cent of their net worth, while Adani’s wealth rose 54.3 per cent. Gautam Adani is now the fourth richest man in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The analysis also looked at the billionaires' wealth relative to their country’s GDP. The average net worth of four of the top five billionaires was 1.7 per cent of their country’s GDP. French billionaire Bernard Arnault is the only one in the list with a higher net worth relative to his country’s GDP.