Gautam Adani has surged past Mukesh Ambani to become India’s richest man once again, less than a year after he lost the top spot in the wake of the Hindenburg report.

The Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Adani Group earlier this week has given a big-time fillip to the fortunes of Adani who’s climbing the wealth charts at a breakneck speed. Adani’s now estimated to be worth $97.6 billion just ahead of Mukesh Ambani who checks into the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $97 billion.

On Thursday Adani was worth $89.9 billion still $7.7 billion behind Ambani and that looked like a hefty gap. But he closed that gap soon after the markets opened Friday. His wealth has now climbed $11.8 billion in just two days.

Adani’s wealth zoomed $4.1 billion higher on Thursday alone following the Supreme Court judgement declaring no more inquiries are needed into the bombshell fraud allegations made by US shortseller Hindenberg a year ago.

Adani has been the fastest-rising billionaire star globally for two days running and means that he has gained over $12 billion in a total of just five days. By comparison Ambani has been holding steady in the wealth charts, posting a relatively unshowy performance that’s left him in the mid-$80-to-$95-billion for most of the past two years.

Adani is now the world’s 12th richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ambani is in the 13th spot. With Adani group share prices seesawing on Friday it’s very possible he could fall slightly behind Ambani as the day progresses.

Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List which also calculates global wealth on a daily basis shows Adani catching up with Ambani but puts him further behind. Ambani, according to Forbes, is now worth $100.3 billion, putting him in 12th position globally. Adani, using Forbes’ reckoning, is worth $77.9 billion and is the world’s 16th-richest person. Forbes could change its estimates later on Friday.

But Forbes also places Gautam’s elder brother Vinod Adani at 85th position on the list and reckons he’s worth $21 billion. According to this calculation he’s richer on his own than global steel baron Lakshmi Mittal and only a few million behind pharma giant Dilip Shanghvi.

Adani said the top court’s ruling meant that “trust has prevailed.”

Ambani and Adani jockeyed throughout 2021 to be India’s richest man. But then Adani raced ahead, remaining on top until the explosive Hindenberg report.

Three other big winners, as the Adani share has climbed, are the venture capitalists and institutions that invested in the group when its prices were at extremely low levels last year. The upside for them has been considerable.

The biggest of these, GQG Partners, invested in the region of $4.3 billion in the group between March and August last year. Another player which made a tidy gain is the Qatar Investment Authority which invested slightly less than $500 million in Adani Green Energy when the share was around Rs 950. On Thursday, Adani Green was trading at Rs 1,691. TotalEnergies, the French company, has also taken a stake in the company.

Of course, the combined market capitalisation of the Adani group companies is still about half their level before Hindenburg alleged wideranging corporate wrongdoing – something the billionaire repeatedly denied.

2022 and 2023 have been two years of massive ups and downs for Adani. He was, at a peak, worth a huge $147 billion, a number that made him Asia’s richest man by a huge margin and also briefly the world’s second-richest person. It was a giddy height to be at with only maverick genius billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX ahead of him.

But Adani was brought spinning back to earth by the explosive nearly 100-page Hindenburg report in January 2023 which called the group’s meteoric stock price rise as the “largest con in corporate history” and argued its companies were hugely overvalued. Within weeks, all the Adani group companies were sliding far more quickly than they had gone up.

Adani’s personal wealth dropped by an almost record $100 billion to $47 billion. For the overall group, Hindenburg’s broadside resulted in even greater losses, wiping out more than $150 billion in equity market value at one point. But Adani and his corporate empire’s fortunes now appear to have turned.

Take a look at how the group’s flagship company, Adani Enterprises, has moved in the last 20 months. At a peak in November 2022, the share was priced at Rs 3,880. By March 2023, following the Hindenberg report, it had crashed to Rs 1,017. Today, though, the share price has climbed back to Rs 3.066 at a peak and then fell back by 1pm to 3,027. Still, analysts note, the company’s price-earning ratio is at 141.35, suggesting it could be quite overvalued.

Similarly, Adani Green Energy’s P/E ratio is an extremely lofty 214.34. Other group companies’ valuations are more line with market ratios.

Another fast-rising group company today is Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone which has gone from a low of Rs 395 in the last one year to a peak of Rs 1,160 at one point today. Adani Ports has a P/E ratio of 39.37 which is high.

Adani could look forward to further gains with the Indian stock market in a bull phase, overtaking the Hong Kong market which has been falling. Also he has given a new twist to an old adage: What goes up must come down. And come right back up again!