Four Indian realtors lose $33 bn: Forbes

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New York, November 21:: Hit by the turmoil in equity and property markets, India's four richest realtors have lost nearly USD 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 Ltd's Rakesh Wadhawan among the eight realty barons from the region.

While Singh has lost USD 22.2 billion alone since March, Chandra has seen an erosion of about USD 8.6 billion in his fortune during the same period, when Raheja and Wadhawan have lost about USD 1.5 billion and USD 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 USD 7.8 billion, but that's just a fraction of his previous worth. In March, we pegged his fortune at USD 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'.

Chandru Raheja, the report noted that his fortune this month is down to half, from USD three billion in March this year.

Writing on Ramesh Chandra, whose net worth currently stands at USD one billion, Forbes said, "Chandra's fortune has dropped 90 per cent since March.

At that time, we valued his net worth at USD 9.6 billion.

Now, it's USD one billion.