Gautam Adani Lost $13 bn Fortune In Past Week, Loses 2nd Richest Asian Spot

Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, who used to hold the title of the second richest man in Asia after Mukesh Ambani, has lost over $13 billion this week, the most anyone has lost in the last seven days. As per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, losing $13.2 billion has plummeted his personal fortune to $63.5 billion, resulting in Chinese billionaire Zhong Shanshan who sells bottled water to claim the second richest Asian spot. A few days back it seemed that Adani was closing the gap with Ambani in terms of personal fortune.

Adani.com

Adani has in the last three days alone lost a fortune worth $9 billion itself in the last three days following media reports that claimed that the National Security Depository Limited (NSDL) froze accounts of three Mauritius-based funds which own stocks worth $6 billion due to insufficient information on the owners. Post the news, shares of Adani Green Energy slipped 7.7 per cent this week whereas Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone dropped to 23 per cent in four days. Adani Total Gas, Adani Transmission and Adani Power plunged to 18 per cent, on the other hand, Adani Enterprises share slipped by almost 15 per cent.

The Adani Group has called the media reports false and said it was done to deliberately misled the investing community. "This is causing irreparable loss of economic value to the investors at large and reputation of the group," the statement read.

NSDL has also come up with a clarification and rejected the news of freezing accounts of three foreign investors. However, the stocks of the company continued to trade weaker.

Earlier this year, Adani Group became the fourth Indian company after Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, HDFC Group and Ratan Tata-led Tata Group to cross $100 billion in market cap.