Nearly $58 billion has been wiped out from Gautam Adani’s fortune in six days, a steep nosedive that has few parallels in history. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Adani’s downfall is over 3 times bigger than ‘crypto king’ Sam Bankman-Fried’s loss of $16 billion in less than a week. The FTX CEO lost all his wealth following the collapse of the crypto exchange.
Surpassing Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Adani became the world’s third richest person by the end of 2022 with a $121 billion worth empire. Under pressure from New York-based shortseller Hindenburg Research’s report on Adani group’s alleged stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme, the tycoon is now worth $61.3 billion and has slipped to the 21st spot on the billionaire list.
The severity, scale and speed of Adani’s plunge is unlike anything the world has seen before, as per Bloomberg estimates. Even though Elon Musk became the first person in history to lose $200 billion after the sharp fall of Tesla shares in 2022, he has since added $36.5 billion to his wealth.
The shocking decline of the former richest man in Asia, now second-richest after Mukesh Ambani, points towards the astounding way in which Adani’s net worth shot up by over $100 billion in three years.
With shares in its flagship Adani Enterprises down about 60%, listed companies under the Adani Group have lost over $100 billion in market value so far since the scathing report. While the Adani Group has repeatedly denied all allegations terming the report “bogus” and threatening action, it was forced to call back what was billed to be India’s biggest follow-on share sale (worth $2.5 billion).
Several media reports have raised concerns about State Bank of India (SBI) and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India being at the risk of overexposure amid Adani’s stock rout. Amid heightened uncertainties, the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday dismissed concerns about the “exposure” of Indian banks to the Adani conglomerate and said that the banking sector was “resilient and stable”.