Jeff Bezos is no longer the second richest person in the world, surpassed by the wealthiest Asian

Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon, has lost the title of the second richest person in the world to Indian industrialist Gautam Adani. According to Business Insider, Gautam Adani became the richest Asian in February of this year, surpassing Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani. In recent months, he has also surpassed Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault in wealth, and now Bezos as well.

Under his conglomerate Adani Group, of which he is the founder and chairman, Adani manages companies in energy and transportation. According to Bloomberg’s calculations, his wealth is now valued at $146.9 billion, while Bezos’s net worth has fallen to $145.8 billion. The decline in Bezos’s wealth is also due to this year’s significant drop in technology stocks, with Amazon’s shares falling by as much as 26% this year, causing Bezos to lose $45 billion of his wealth.

When Adani’s wealth reached $122 billion in April of this year, surpassing Warren Buffett and Larry Page, Adani joined the club of centibillionaires, individuals whose net worth exceeds $100 billion or other currencies.

Like many other multibillionaires, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, 60-year-old Adani dropped out of school to become a business tycoon. After leaving college at India’s Gujarat University where he studied commerce, Adani became a diamond sorter in Mumbai. Before founding the trading company Adani Enterprises in 1988, the leading company of the Adani group, he managed his older brother Mansukhbhai’s company that dealt with the import of PVC, a key raw material for plastic production.

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—Currently, Adani owns the largest trading port in Mumbai, India, and has a majority stake in Mumbai Airport. The Adani group consists of seven public companies, including Adani Green Energy Ltd and Adani Total Gas Ltd. The goal of the Adani group is to become the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, into which they promised to invest $70 billion last year, but they have faced criticism as a large part of their revenue still comes from fossil fuels.

As of September 16, 2022, Adani Group has a market capitalization of over $258.44 billion.

This is also the first time someone from Asia has topped Bloomberg’s list of the richest people in the world, which has mostly been dominated by American tech entrepreneurs. Although Adani has rapidly surpassed some of the long-standing richest people in the world since the beginning of this year, starting from 14th place on Bloomberg’s billionaire list, he will need more time to reach and surpass Elon Musk, who is currently worth as much as $264 billion.