Hit by the turmoil in equity and property markets, India's four richest realtors have lost nearly $33 billion (over Rs 1,50,000 crore) since March this year, with the richest of them, K P Singh of DLF, alone accounting for about two-thirds of it, Forbes magazine said.
Listing out the losses suffered by richest property owners in Asia in the ongoing turmoil, in a new report Forbes has named DLF's Singh, Unitech's Ramesh Chandra, Chandru Raheja of Mumbai-based Raheja group and Housing Development & Infrastructure's (HDIL) Rakesh Wadhawan among the eight realty barons from the region.
While Singh has lost $22.2 billion alone since March, Chandra has seen an erosion of about $8.6 billion in his fortune during the same period, when Raheja and Wadhawan have lost about $1.5 billion and $500 million, respectively.
In the latest list of India's 40 richest people published by Forbes earlier this month, K P Singh was ranked at the eighth spot, while Chandru Raheja and Ramesh Chandra were placed at the 20th and 27th positions, respectively.
Realty stocks have been among the worst hit in the ongoing meltdown at the bourses and a number of them registered losses even today when the overall market benchmark Sensex ended with significant gains.
While the Sensex today surged by 464 points or 5.5 per cent, the BSE Realty index dropped by two per cent. Unitech shares dropped by 9.4 per cent, DLF slipped 3.4 per cent and HDIL shed over four per cent.
"K P Singh's fortune is still a hefty $7.8 billion, but that's just a fraction of his previous worth. In March, we pegged his fortune at $30 billion. Shares of DLF, his real estate company, fell steeply over the past year despite Singh's attempts to boost prices through a buyback," the business magazine Forbes said in its report titled 'Asia's Collapsing Real Estate Fortunes'.