Mukesh Ambani loses Asia's richest man tag to Jack

New Delhi : After oil prices collapsed dramatically in the global market, Mukesh Ambani lost his title of Asia's richest man to Jack Ma.

The rout, exacerbated by mounting fears that the spread of the novel coronavirus will thrust the world into a recession, erased $5.8 billion from Ambani’s net worth on Monday and dropped him to No. 2 on the list of Asia’s richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., has regained the top spot with his net worth of $44.5 billion, $2 billon more than that of Mukesh Ambani.

This is the biggest drop in oil prices in last 29 years as Saudi Arabia and Russia vowed to pump more in a struggle for market share.

While some of the Alibaba business were also destroyed by the coronavirus impact, its other businesses compensated amid rising demand for its cloud computing services and mobile apps.

Reliance Industries, by comparison, has no such silver lining. The Indian company’s shares plunged 12% on Monday, the most since 2009, extending this year’s decline to 26%. Alibaba’s American depositary receipts have slipped 6.8% so far in 2020.

Considering the situation across the globe, it is likely that the oil prices will be reduced further.