Andrew Forrest has had a good year, Gina Rinehart not so much and Gautum Adani has had a shocker, but there was no room for Queensland’s own Clive Palmer in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

According to the index, Elon Musk retains the No.1 spot as the world’s richest man after France’s Bernard Arnault once threatened.

Despite Mr Musk’s obvious problems with Twitter, which some believe is only worth about a third of what he paid for it, he was still worth $US247 billion ($368 billion), an increase of $US110 billion so far this year.

Mr Arnault, who founded LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, was listed by Forbes earlier this year as the world’s richest man with $US220 billion. Bloomberg this week marked him down to $US199 billion.

Mr Adani, who took a massive hit from the scandal in January when an activist report raised questions about stock manipulation within his conglomerate which includes the Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland, has lost $US60 billion and is no longer India’s richest man.

“Adani, chairman of Adani Group, also posted the biggest one-day loss of any billionaire, shedding about $US20.8 billion on January 27, after short-seller Hindenburg Research accused his conglomerate of accounting fraud and stock manipulation – a claim Adani denies,” the Bloomberg Index said.

According to Bloomberg, each member of the index made an average of $US14 million a day over the past six months and the world’s 500 richest people added $US852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023.

It found that Australian miner and philanthropist Andrew Forrest was now worth $US23.2 billion, an increase of $US2 billion for the year so far. Fellow miner Ms Rinehart dropped $US3 billion to be worth $US20.9 billion.

Property developer Harry Triguboff, of Meriton Group fame, was listed at 109 with $US16 billion, having added $US3.2 billion in the year so far.

Atlassian founders Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar were worth $US10.5 billion and $US10.4 billion respectively having added $US2.3 billion to their wealth. The next Australian was Westfield founder Frank Lowy with $US7.6 billion.

The poorest billionaire on the list at No.500 was worth $US6.8 billion.

While Mr Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to flirt with scheduling a cage match, Tesla’s chief executive came out on top in dollar terms, Bloomberg said.

This story first appeared in InQueensland and is republished here with permission