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Mukesh Ambani is No Longer Asia's Richest Man

According to : - entrepreneur.com

India’s energy tycoon Mukesh Ambani has lost the Asia’s Richest Man title to Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma following a sharp fall in oil prices and the resultant global stocks. The Reliance Industries Chairman’s lost $5.8 billion (INR 42,700 crore) on 9 March, as reported by Bloomberg.

With a net worth of $42.3 billion or INR 3.1 lakh crore, as on the day of filing this story, Ambani is placed on the 19^th position on Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the richest people, preceded by Ma with net worth of $45.7 billion.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett were the top three on the list with net worth of $117 billion, $107 billion and $79.8 billion, respectively. Apart from Ambani, Wipro’s Azim Premji (67), HCL founder and Chairman Shiv Nadar (84) and banking tycoon Uday Kotak (98) are the other three Indians in the top 100 list.

The Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack has climbed up on the first position in Asia rich list of Bloomberg after nearly two years. Ma too suffered a loss of $1.06 billion on the same day, with most of Alibaba’s businesses hit by the coronavirus crisis. However, its damage was contained by an increase in demand for its cloud computing services and mobile apps, as per the Bloomberg report.

Oil price saw the steepest fall in the last 29 years on 9 March as price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia intensified. In a struggle for market share while Saudi Arabia slashed its crude pricing in a bid to pump more output in the market, Russia, the largest producer who is not part of OPEC (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), said it will ramp up production next month.  

Brent Crude price has crashed to $36 per barrel from around $68 at the start of the current calender year.

This all-out price war resonated through stocks of energy industry, with Reliance Industry shares slipping as much as 12 per cent on 9 March. The Indian stock market dipped by almost 2,000 points on 9 March hit by a variety of factors, including deepening Yes Bank crisis and rising coronavirus cases in the country, apart from the crash in global crude prices.

According to :- livemint.com

Mukesh Ambani loses Asia's richest crown to Jack Ma

Indian energy tycoon Mukesh Ambani is no longer Asia’s richest man, relinquishing the title to Jack Ma after oil prices collapsed along with global stocks.

The rout, exacerbated by mounting fears that the spread of the novel coronavirus will thrust the world into a recession, erased $5.8 billion from Ambani’s net worth on Monday and dropped him to No. 2 on the list of Asia’s richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ma, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder who relinquished the No. 1 ranking in mid-2018, is back on top with a $44.5 billion fortune, about $2.6 billion more than Ambani.

Oil plunged the most in 29 years as Saudi Arabia and Russia vowed to pump more in a struggle for market share just as the coronavirus is spurring the first decline in demand in more than a decade. That raises questions about whether Ambani’s flagship Reliance Industries Ltd. will be able to cut net debt to zero by early 2021, as he has pledged. The plan hinges on a proposal to sell a stake in the group’s oil and petrochemicals division to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world’s biggest producer.

While the coronavirus has curtailed some of Alibaba’s businesses, the damage has been mitigated by increased demand for its cloud computing services and mobile apps.

Reliance Industries, by comparison, has no such silver lining. The Indian company’s shares plunged 12% on Monday, the most since 2009, extending this year’s decline to 26%. Alibaba’s American depositary receipts have slipped 6.8% so far in 2020.

Few of the world’s billionaires fared well in Monday’s collapse as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each plunged more than 7.5%, the most since the 2008 financial crisis, threatening to end the longest bull market in history. But no one did worse than those whose fortunes are underpinned by oil. Wildcatter Harold Hamm’s fortune was cut almost in half to $2.4 billion and fellow oil magnate Jeff Hildebrand lost $3 billion, bumping both from Bloomberg’s 500-member wealth ranking.

In its pivot toward new businesses such as telecommunications, technology and retail, Reliance Industries piled on billions of dollars of debt over the years.

It spent almost $50 billion -- most of it funded by borrowings -- to build Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., which became India’s No. 1 wireless carrier within about three years of its debut. As the mobile venture took off, Ambani also unveiled plans for an e-commerce empire to rival Amazon.com Inc. in India.

Addressing concerns over the liabilities, Ambani pledged in August to cut the group’s net debt to zero from about $21 billion as of last March. The Aramco deal is crucial to that plan for which Reliance Industries has valued its oil-to-chemicals division at $75 billion including debt, implying a $15 billion valuation for the 20% stake that’s for sale.

Signs of a potential delay to that deal unnerved some investors, hammering the stock since it touched a record high on Dec. 19.

Reliance Industries expected the Aramco transaction to be completed by March, but people familiar with the matter said in February that talks were still ongoing to bridge differences between the two parties over the deal’s structure.

Adding to the uncertainty, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has petitioned a court to halt the proposed stake sale, threatening a key source of funds needed to pare net debt.

Ambani, 62, could soon bounce back from the setback, said Harish H.V., managing partner at ECube Investment Advisors in Bengaluru.

“The game isn’t over," he said. “Ambani has successfully built a robust business model which would keep him in the game. Moreover, his telecom business will start yielding results in coming years."

According to : - businesstoday.in

Mukesh Ambani loses $5.6 billion in a day

Mukesh Ambani had a rough Monday as he lost $5.6 billion on the back of severe decline in Reliance Industries' share price. Ambani's losses stemmed from 31 per cent decline in crude oil prices as Saudi Arabia started a price war with Russia, aggravated by weak consumer sentiment due to rising cases of coronavirus in India and the world.

According to Forbes' Billionaires List, Ambani's net worth stood at $42.2 billion on March 9, 2020, 11.6 per cent or $5.6 billion lower than what was seen on 5:00 pm Eastern Time on Friday or 2:30 am IST on Saturday.

Ambani emerged as the second-biggest loser last week, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Forbes reported, as global markets continued to fall due to coronavirus fears. With people shelving travel plans due to the deadly virus outbreak, oil prices have reached their lowest levels in several years. This affected share price of Reliance Industries, Ambani's oil-to-telecom conglomerate, which runs the world's biggest refining complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

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