The richest man in Asia has now broken into the league of the richest in the world!
Chairman, Managing Director, and the largest shareholder in Reliance Industries Ltd., Mukesh Ambani has climbed his way back into the world’s top 10 richest billionaires after a gap of 9 years.
This is thanks to more than $22 billion that he raised in the last two months since India was locked down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In the past two months, Ambani has sold close to 25 per cent stake in Jio platforms, Reliance’s telecom and broadband arm, which is also India’s fastest growing and most popular telecom network at present. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook bought a 9.99 per cent stake for $5.7 billion, Robert Smith’s Vista Equity Partners and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign public fund, the Public Investment Fund bought a 2.3 per cent stake each for $1.5 billion. All these investments have also made Jio net-debt free way ahead of its target of March 2021.
Ambani is currently at number 10 position with a net worth of $64.1 billion, adding a whopping $27.3 billion since Forbes announced its list of the richest billionaires in March 2020. At that point, Ambani was at Number 21, with a net worth of $36.8 billion.
According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he has also become the only Asian in the exclusive club of the world’s top 10 richest people.
However, this is not the first time that Ambani has broken into this coveted list of the Forbes Richest Billionaires. He was first listed in the top 10 richest billionaires in 2008 – with a net worth of $43 billion, he was ranked number 5. He stayed in the top ten for the next three years. But, in 2012, he had fallen out as others moved forth, and he has now made a staggering comeback after a nine year hiatus.
Isn’t it astonishing that when the world is looking at a recession, the shares of this conglomerate have doubled from a low in March 2020.
2