NEW DELHI: India’s Mukesh Ambani has lost his crown as Asia’s richest person after the latest rout across global markets wiped almost $6 billion off his fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

All told, the world’s 500 richest people lost $238.5 billion on Monday, according to Bloomberg, the biggest daily plunge since the index began tracking them in Oct 2016.

The sell-off erased $5.8 billion from 62-year-old Ambani’s net worth to leave him with a net worth of about $41.8 billion.

He was overtaken by Chinese tycoon Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba whose fortune had fallen about $1.1 billion to $44.5 billion. Ma, 55, had ceded the number-one ranking in mid-2018.

The slump in oil prices raises questions about plans by Ambani’s Reliance conglomerate to cut debt as they hinge on selling a stake in its oil and petrochemicals unit to Saudi Aramco, Bloomberg reported.

Ambani, whose fortune ballooned on the back of India’s telecoms boom, lives with his family in a 27-storey luxury Mumbai skyscraper reputed to have cost more than $1 billion to build.

The carnage on global markets on Monday also lost Amazon founder and world’s richest man Jeff Bezos $5.6 billion and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett $5.3 billion, Bloomberg said. However, they still have fortunes of $111.8bn and $76.4bn respectively.

Frenchman Bernard Arnault, chairman of luxury-goods giant LVMH, was Europe’s biggest decliner with a $4.4-bn drop in his net worth to $81.4bn.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2020