Bruised by a fall in share prices, Mukesh Ambani dropped to the eighth position in the global rich list, even as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos topped the charts with a net worth of $201 billion.

By December, Ambani’s net worth had dipped 9 per cent to $82 billion from $90 billion in August. However, the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) continues to be the richest Asian, according to data collated by Hurun Research.

In June, riding the digital wave and a spate of fund-raising, Ambani had emerged the eighth richest man in the world, a position he shared with Google co-founder Sergey Brin. He was ranked ninth richest for two consecutive years, 2019 and 2018. By this August, he had climbed to the fourth place.

The RIL share price fell to ₹1995.50 on December 30 from its 52-week high of ₹2,368.80 on September 16.

Global Top 10

Since August, Bezos’ net worth has risen 86 per cent, helping him maintain the world’s richest man title, while with a similar 86 per cent surge in wealth, Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk ($145 billion) moved into the second position. Four months ago, Musk did not feature in Hurun’s Top 10 rich list.

French multinational luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton SE group head Bernard Arnault ($120 billion) came in third, followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($111 billion) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ($109 billion) in the fifth slot. Gates (-3 per cent), besides Ambani, was the other billionaire to record an erosion in wealth since August.

“Backed by the stellar performance of LVMH and Tesla share prices, Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk respectively stormed into the global top 10, resulting in a rejig of the global rankings,” Hurun India Managing Director and Chief Researcher Anas Rahman Junaid told BusinessLine .

“Having kickstarted the transformation of Reliance to a tech-driven company, the market is awaiting the unfolding of execution of Ambani’s strategy,” he added.

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