India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani (pictured), has returned to the top spot in Asia, edging out the founder of Nongfu Shanquan, Glittering Zhong.
India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has returned to the top spot in Asia, edging out the founder of Nongfu Sanquan, Glittering Chung.
Despite the fierce shocks in the stock market over the past week, Ambani’s Reliance Industries was relatively unaffected, as the company said earlier that it would spin off its oil refining and chemicals businesses into independent operating divisions.
But China’s leading packaged drinking water brand, Nongfu Shanquan, collapsed 20 percent in the past week, shrinking Fursten Zhong’s value to $22 billion from the high it hit the week before. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zhong was worth $76.6 billion as of Feb. 27, down from Ambani’s $79.9 billion.
Ambani has held the title of Asia’s richest man for most of the past two years, replacing Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma. Zhong furtively relied on the excellent performance of his two companies, Nongfu Mountain Spring and Wantai Biological, to join the Bloomberg billionaire list, and at the end of last year, he even took the richest man in Asia from Ambani, and at the beginning of this year, he even became the sixth richest man in the world, even the “God of Stock” Warren Buffett was overtaken by him.
Farmers’ Spring shares peaked in January, more than tripling the pricing of its initial public offering (IPO), when consumers enthusiastically pursued consumer stocks. Vaccine maker Wantai Bio’s shares soared 3,757% at one point.
But this past week, Hong Kong and China stocks took a back seat to the global stock market, with Farmer’s Spring retracing its year-to-date gains and Biotec writing its biggest one-month decline ever.
Ambani continues to shift his business focus from energy to technology and e-commerce. He sold $27 billion worth of stakes in Reliance Group’s digital and retail divisions to Google and Facebook investors last year, a deal that boosted his value by $18 billion.
The recently announced spin-off of Reliance’s petrochemicals business will help Ambani attract more investors and accelerate a planned share sale to Saudi Arabia. The petrochemicals business accounted for 60% of Reliance’s revenue last year.
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