India’s Gautam Adani is back as Asia’s richest man – Saudi Gazette

India’s Gautam Adani is back as Asia’s richest man – Saudi Gazette

NEW DELHI — Gautam Adani has had a good start to 2024.After a tumultuous year, the Indian tycoon has just retaken his former position as Asia’s richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The founder of the sprawling Adani Group is now worth $97.6 billion, which makes him the 12th wealthiest person on the planet.The self-made industrialist and college dropout has gained more than $13 billion in net worth over the last two days, which has allowed him to overtake fellow countryman Mukesh Ambani as the continent’s biggest billionaire, the tracker said. Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries, is currently worth $97 billion.Adani’s jump in wealth — the world’s largest this year, according to the index — comes almost 12 months after his ports-to-power conglomerate was accused by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.”As a result of the scrutiny that followed those accusations, Adani’s fortune, which in September 2022 was worth more than that of Jeff Bezos, saw a stunning fall. At one point, the businessman lost over $80 billion following Hindenburg’s release of the report in January 2023.His net worth recovered somewhat in the months that followed. At the end of