Seventh richest person in the world
As for Gautam Adani, even after Friday’s loss — the fourth largest market-driven decline in the history of the Bloomberg Wealth Index — the 60-year-old’s net worth is $92.7 billion. He comes after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the seventh richest person in the world.
The most immediate concern is the $2.5 billion flotation of shares of his parent company, Adani Enterprises, which aims to fund capital expenditures and pay down the debt of its various units.
The IPO, the largest IPO ever for a listed company in India, aims to attract a mix of institutional, retail and high net worth investors. It had already attracted major investors including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, State Bank of India Pension Fund and Life Insurance Corp of India before the Hindenburg report was released.
Adani Enterprises closed Friday’s trading 11% below the lower end of the IPO range, which closes on January 31.
Although investors usually wait in IPOs in India until the last day to submit bids, the IPO was generally quiet. And at 3:30 pm Friday in Mumbai, 1% of the stake allocated to individual investors was sold, and company employees bid on 4% of the shares offered, according to what was revealed by the stock exchange data.
