Gautam Adani crowned world’s biggest gainer of 2022; 5 characteristics that make him special

NEW DELHI: Spurred by the head-turning rally in Adani Group stocks, billionaire Gautam Adani is ending the year as not only the world's third richest person but also the top gainer by making more billions than anyone else on the planet in 2022.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the world's 500 richest people, shows that Adani became richer by $47 billion in 2022. At the bottom of the list is Tesla CEO Elon Musk who, despite being richer than Adani and world's No. 2, lost $114 billion this year.

With his net worth estimated at $124 billion, Adani, the 60-year-old Ahmedabad-based industrialist, is behind Musk ($156 bn) and French luxury retail king Bernard Arnault ($163 bn) in the rich list.

Adani, who is now the busiest dealmaker in Asia, has been on an acquisition spree by buying assets across industries as diverse as media and cement.

The coal-to-edible oils conglomerate is now in the last leg of completing the acquisition of media broadcaster NDTV. Earlier in the year, it became India's second largest cement producer by buying Ambuja Cement and ACC.

Adani Group stocks have given fabulous returns to investors this year with four out of seven stocks of the giant giving multibagger returns going up to 200%. In the last one year, the group's total market cap has also nearly doubled to Rs 18.6 lakh crore in mid-December as compared to Rs 9.6 lakh crore in 2021.

5 factors that make Adani special

The maverick Gujarati business tycoon, who dropped out of a south Mumbai college in 1978, started his journey as a small diamond trader in Dhanji Street before starting Adani Exports, which was later rechristened as Adani Enterprises.

In Adani’s recent biography published by Penguin, author RN Bhaskar says there are 5 factors that make him stand out from many other industrialists in the world:

1) The biographer says Adani’s unwillingness to raise funds from an investing public till a business has begun generating money has nurtured a sense of loyalty towards him.

2) The second is his ability to build and nurture relationships. “He does not like going back on any deal that he has entered into. Nor does he try to buy out or squeeze out his partners,” says the book ‘Gautam Adani: Reimagining Business in India and the World’.

3) The third factor which differentiates Adani from many other Indian industrialists is that he does not block the chances for anyone to grow or compete with him, according to the author.

4) The fourth factor is that he is of the firm belief that when the corporate group's interests are closely aligned with national interests, growth can be assured.

5) The last and the fifth factor, cited in the biography, is Adani’s respect for fair play. “In some cases, where he wanted to buy out a shareholder, he paid him more than what the market price was,” says Bhaskar.

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