Reliance Industries Ltd., controlled by Asia¡¯s richest man, toppled ExxonMobil Corp. to become the world¡¯s largest energy company after Saudi Aramco, as investors piled into the conglomerate, lured by the Indian firm¡¯s digital and retail forays.
Reliance, which manages the biggest refinery complex, gained 4.3 percent in Mumbai on Friday adding $8 billion to take its market value to $189 billion, while Exxon Mobil erased about $1 billion. Reliance¡¯s shares have jumped 43 percent this year compared with a 39 percent drop in Exxon¡¯s shares as refiners across the globe struggled with a plunge in fuel demand. Aramco, with a market capitalization of $1.76 trillion, is the world¡¯s biggest energy company.
While the energy business accounted for about 80 percent of Reliance¡¯s revenue in the year ended March 31, Chairman Mukesh Ambani¡¯s plan to expand the company¡¯s digital and retail arms has helped him attract $20 billion into the Jio Platforms Ltd. unit. That in turn helped add $22.3 billion to Ambani¡¯s wealth this year, propelling him to the fifth spot in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ambani¡¯s dealmaking has lured investments from Google to Facebook Inc. into his digital platform in recent months. The 63-year-old tycoon has identified technology and retail as future growth areas in a pivot away from the energy businesses he inherited from his father who died in 2002.
Meanwhile, large-scale destruction of global oil demand ¡ª some 30 million barrels a day, or a third of regular usage, in April ¡ª sent energy markets into a second-quarter tailspin, from which they¡¯ve only recently started to recover. Worst-in-a-generation oil prices combined with OPEC production cuts, collapsing refining margins and millions of barrels of unsold crude have hurt big oil companies including Exxon and Chevron Corp.
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