Mukesh Ambani loses ‘Asia’s richest man’ title to Alibaba’s Jack Ma

Mukesh Ambani loses ‘Asia’s richest man’ title to Alibaba’s Jack Ma

His net worth reduced by $5.8 billion because of a fall in oil prices and global stocks on Monday.

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani lost the ‘Asia’s richest man’ title to Alibaba’s Jack Ma as steep fall in oil prices and global stocks reduced his net worth by $5.8 billion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. With a net worth of $44.5 billion, $2.6 billion more than Ambani, Ma is back on the number one spot that he ceded in 2018.

The Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, placed Ma at the 18th spot. He lost $1.06 billion in a single day. With a net worth of $41.8 billion Ambani ranked 19th on the list. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and chairman of luxury goods giant LVMH Bernard Arnault were the top three. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ranked fifth on the list.

Oil prices hit their lowest since 1991 on Monday as Saudi Arabia and Russia vowed to pump more in their scramble for market share. The drastic fall in prices came amid the first decline in demand in more than a decade, caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

Shares of oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries fell by almost 14%, the biggest single-day decline for stock in 10 years, after global crude oil prices crashed, reported The Economic Times. Shareholders of the company lost over Rs 1.08 lakh crore in one day.

The coronavirus outbreak has also hit China-based Alibaba’s businesses but the damage has been reduced by an increase in demand for its cloud computing serves and mobile apps. The company’s shares fell by 3.41% on Monday.

Bezos and Gates lost more than $5 billion as the S&P 500 Index, the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 7.5%.