The billionaire Gautam Adani is now the world’s seventh richest man, with a net worth of $97.6 billion. He remained in the 3rd position for a long time and was recently replaced by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($ 122 billion). Bernard Arnault (Louis Vitton) dominates the rich list with a fortune of $215 billion followed by Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter) whose net worth was last pegged at $170 billion.

According to Forbes Real Time Billionaire Index, Adani’s wealth tumbled by over $18 billion to $100 billion in the opening trading hours of Friday.

Shares of India’s Adani Group companies slid sharply on Wednesday morning after Hindenburg Research flagged concerns in a 24 January 2023 report. Hindenburg Research tweeted,” Adani Group – How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History”, through its official Twitter handle.

Adani has called these allegations ‘malicious’ and said that it is examining legal action against Hindenburg.

Also read: Adani Group shares slide further in market cap on Friday

An overview of the Adani Group

Adani runs India’s largest port, a power company, and a commodities trading business. Seven listed companies of the Adani conglomerate have lost a combined $45 billion in market capitalization since Wednesday.

According to an early report, the Group’s market cap took a beating of about Rs 2 lakh crore in the first few hours of Friday’s trading sessions. On Wednesday, the Group’s market cap tumbled by about Rs 97,000 crore.

Over the years, Adani has leased 7,350 hectares from the government in an area called Mundra in the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat. He in turn has sublet this land to other companies, including state-owned Indian Oil Co., for as much as $11 a square meter. At least 1,200 hectares of grazing land has taken away from villagers between 2005 and 2007. Adani has built the country’s largest private port by volume as well as a 4, 620-megawatt coal-fired power plant on that land.