Four Indians among top 10 richest in the world

[ross18]

Four Indians among top 10 richest in the world

Four Indians have made it to the global richie-rich top 10 club, the most from any country. Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and DLF’s KP Singh have joined ArcelorMittal’s LN Mittal in this exclusive club, according to Forbes magazine’s annual list of billionaires.

The list is based on closing stock prices of February 11 and factors in the market crash in January this year which shaved off billions from the net worth of India’s wealthiest. It obviously does not factor the market meltdown in March. If the slump in major emerging markets, including India, were to continue through the year, one might see many tycoons slipping in their rankings.

Bill Gates’ reign at the top in the annual listings came to an end this year, as he slipped to the third position with a net worth of $58 billion. The No 1 slot was taken by Gates’ friend and the world’s most famous investor Warren Buffet, whose net worth touched a whopping $62 billion.

Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim, whose wealth had eclipsed that of Mr Gates earlier this year, finished second in the annual listing with a net worth of $60 billion.

The Indians are not far behind. LN Mittal, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani occupy the fourth, fifth, and sixth positions with KP Singh taking the eighth slot. Mr Singh recorded one of the biggest jump in rankings from 62 to number 8 this year. His net worth tripled to $30 billion this year.

Anil Ambani registered the biggest increase in net worth during the year. He was marginally ahead of his elder brother Mukesh Ambani, having added $23.8 billion to his kitty compared with $22.9 billion by the chairman of Reliance Industries over the past one year.

These top four-richest Indians lost $20 billion between November 2 and February 11. As per the Forbes 40 richest Indians list which came out in November last year, the combined net worth of the top four was pegged at $180 billion against $160 billion as of February 11, 2008.

In all, there are 53 Indians in the latest annual ranking of Forbes, 50% more than the previous year’s 36.
Significantly, the combined net worth of Indians is now the third-largest, only behind that of richest citizens of the US and Russia.

In some cases, the wealth estimates are based on holdings in companies which are not listed. This, some market observers point out, is problematic. Forbes arrives at its numbers for unlisted companies by benchmarking them with listed peers. Such an estimate may peg the value of such companies at a unrealistically low level, which would hurt the interests of the current shareholders.

The other possibility is that it could exaggerate the valuation of the unlisted company. This might hurt potential investors. The only true measure of wealth is obviously the valuation that emerges in the market. Market capitalisation in any case is only an expression of wealth which has already been created, analysts say.

In this year’s list, the number of Indian billionaires is marginally lower than the Germans who number 59. But the combined net worth of Indians — at $334.6 billion — is $50 billion more than that of the Germans. The combined net worth of Indian billionaires rocketed by $143.6 billion, or 75%, from last year’s $191 billion.

Globally, the net worth of billionaires was up by a third to hit $4.4 trillion. This implies a handful of Indians contributed nearly 15% of total increase in wealth of global billionaires over the past one year.

Indian billionaires represent 4.7% of the total number of billionaires around the world, according to the Forbes data.
The Indian entrants to the billionaires list this year include: Gautam Adani, Anand Jain, Chandru Raheja, Rakesh Wadhawan, Micky Jagtiani, Niranjan Hiranandani, Rajan Raheja, Reji Abraham, GVK Reddy, Gracias Saldanha, Gautam Thapar, Girish Tanti, Nimesh Kampani, Jitendra Tanti, Sameer Gehlaut, Vinod Tanti, Habil Khorakiwala, Anu Aga, Jignesh Shah and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.

The names who do not figure in this year’s billionaires list include Keshub Mahindra, Pradeep Jain and Pallonji Mistry, who has taken an Irish citizenship.

Indians remained by far the richest of the Asian lot. While the number of Indian billionaires had overtaken that of Japan last year itself, India only increased its lead over Japan.

China took the second spot in Asia with 42 billionaires compared with 24 from Japan, which remained at the same level as last year. China added 22 new billionaires to its list of 20 last year to overtake Japan as the Asian nation with second-most number of billionaires. Among the BRIC countries, the number of billionaires from Brazil dropped from 20 to 18 this year. Russia, China and India added 34, 22 and 17 new billionaires to their tally, respectively.

Together, the three emerging economies out of the BRIC pack constituted 40% of the increase in the number of billionaires which totalled 179 over last year. Almost one-third of the total increase in net worth of global billionaires has come from India and Russia put together.

Incidentally, the average net worth of Indian billionaires was also among the highest. At $6.3 billion, it is more than that of US ($3.4 billion), Russia ($5.4 billion), China ($1.9 billion) as also the global average ($3.9 billion).

Source :- Four Indians among top 10 richest in the world- Corporate Trends-News By Company-News-The Economic Times

[KAMAKSHI_CBS]

GR8 NEWS!!!!
INDIA N INDIANS ON HIGH...

[musadique2008]

hi guys....hows everything going on? mySELF LOOKING OUT FOR CASE STUDIES & PROJECTS ON MANAGEMENT............

[dhivik]

brilliant read...i think the way u have divulged into details is brilliant...also u have said the mahindras have taken up irish citizenship..one thing i wanted to know is ..is there any advantages having irish citizenship over an indian citizenship???

[boomshankar]

amazing stuff
but these guys should help to bring up some of the less unfortunate indians
Then they will truly be even richer