Alibaba’s Jack Ma unseats Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani as Asia’s richest man
BEIJING: 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 US$5.8 billion from Ambani’s net worth yesterday and dropped him to No. 2 on the list of Asia’s richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group Holding – which owns the South China Morning Post – relinquished No.1 ranking in mid 2018, but is back on top with a US$44.5 billion fortune, about US$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 the coronavirus is spurring the first decline in demand in more than a decade. That raises questions about whether Ambani’s flagship Reliance Industries 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 Company, 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% yesterday, 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 yesterday 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 US$2.4 billion and fellow oil magnate Jeff Hildebrand lost US$3 billion, bumping both from Bloomberg’s 500-member wealth ranking.
South China Morning Post
