Aliko Dangote and Abdulsamad Rabiu, two billionaires from Nigeria who are among the 500 richest individuals, have both lost a combined $5.85 billion.
As of June 15, 2023, information from the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, BBI, a daily rating of the world's wealthiest individuals, revealed unfavorable changes in the estimations of the wealth of Nigerian businesspeople.
The BBI is Bloomberg's daily tracker of the richest persons in the world. Each billionaire's profile page offers information on how the net worth study was calculated. The assessments of the wealth of the Nigerian businesspeople indicated negative fluctuations as of June 15, 2023, according to data on the web.
The index showed that Dangote, the chairman, and CEO of the Dangote Group, lost roughly $3.12 billion in the most recent revision. While Rabiu, the CEO of BUA Group, according to the BBI lost $2.73 billion of his money.
Less than a day had passed since the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) floated the local currency when the losses happened. This report is courtesy of The Cable, a Nigerian newspaper, which also believes that the recent naira floating may have caused changes in the foreign exchange markets, which may have contributed to the losses suffered by the billionaires.
The local currency can be established by the forces of supply and demand on the foreign exchange market thanks to the currency float exchange rate mechanism.
This implies that there will no longer be a set rate for trading foreign exchange in Nigeria. As a result, the CBN's direct intervention in the FX market is eliminated. The market responded quickly to the Nigerian FX system's unification, meanwhile.
According to information from FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange, the naira ended at N664/dollar on Wednesday at the investors and exporters (I&E) window after fluctuating between N700 and N755 to the US dollar.
The nation's official exchange rate trading platform is the I&E foreign exchange (FX) window. It is a market sector for investors, exporters, and end users that enables FX trading at exchange rates decided by current market conditions.