New Delhi, Sep 16 (Agency) With a surge in his wealth, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani has become the second richest man in the world beating France’s Bernard Arnault AND Family, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list.The list showed Adani’s total net worth at around $ 154.4 billion as of September 16.Adani Group’s interests span infrastructure, commodities, power generation and transmission and real estate.With the latest rise in his wealth on the back of rallying Group stocks, Adani is now only behind Tesla’s Elon Musk who remains the world’s richest man with $273.5 billion net worth, showed the Forbes data.Adani has aggressively expanded its operations and entered into new businesses. The fast expansion on the back of debt has, however, raised some fears in a section of the market that it could result into debt trap.
Global market research firm CreditSights in a recent report warned that overly ambitious debt-funded growth plans could eventually spiral into a massive debt trap.The report noted that Adani Group has been investing aggressively across both existing and new businesses, predominantly funded with debt, resulting in elevated leverage and solvency ratios.”This has understandably caused concerns about the group as a whole, and what implications it could have on the group companies that are bond issuers. In the worst-case scenario, overly ambitious debt-funded growth plans could eventually spiral into a massive debt trap, and possibly culminate into a distressed situation or default of one or more group companies,” said CreditSights in its report titled ‘Adani Group: Deeply Overleveraged.’