Bill Gates Loses Title Of World’s Richest Man

Poor Bill Gates.

That sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. It turns out the Microsoft founder has lost the one thing money can buy: his position as the richest man in the world. According to Forbes Magazine, which loves to track the comings and goings of billionaires, philanthropist Warren Buffet (left) now stands as the man with the most moolah, having a bank account that sits at $62 billion.

Gates doesn’t even get the satisfaction of being runner-up. He’s also beaten by Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecommunications tycoon, who eked out $60 billion.

Gates sits alone in third with a paltry $58 billion at his disposal, the first time in 13 years he’s been bested.  

Buffet, the man behind Berkshire Hathaway, long held second place in the annual rankings. His fortune increased by $10 billion, despite the fact he’s embarked on a mission to donate 85 per cent of his money to charity.

“Even though he is giving away a piece of his fortune each year, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, the source of Warren Buffet’s wealth, has been rising very rapidly,” notes Forbes CEO Steve Forbes.

Ironically, a lot of that dough is being sent to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity set up by the computer wizard. Both Gates and Buffett also regularly play bridge together, and you can only imagine what the stakes in those games might be.

Buffett rescued Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile firm, in 1965, turning it into one of the most powerful business entities on the planet. It’s now a holding company that controls a large number of other well known enterprises, like Benjamin Moore paints, Dairy Queen and even Fruit of the Loom. ( See what else it owns here .)

The youngest billionaire on the chart is also one of the newest. It’s Mark Zuckerberg, a 23-year-old who created the website Facebook and has been rolling in cash ever since. He’s in the money to the tune of $1.5 billion and is the youngest self-made billionaire to ever make it onto the list.

And who’s the richest Canadian keeping all this expensive company? It’s David Thomson and his family, who run a media empire worth $18.9 billion, good enough for 31st place overall.

Other Canucks of note that won’t be having a tag day anytime soon:

• Galen Weston and family, the owners of Loblaws, at number 132 with $7 billion to their names;
• The Irvings of the east, who have pumped their oil worth to $6.7 billion (#140);
• Mike Lazaridis and Jim Ballsillie, the duo behind Waterloo-based Blackberry creator Research  In Motion (the former has $3.6 billion, the latter $3.4, good for 296th and 327th place respectively);
• Charles Bronfman, who can drink to his $2.4 billion liquor fortune (#503);
• And a name that might surprise you: Guy Laliberte, the creator of Cirque du Soleil, who has managed to turn that enterprise into a magical $1.7 billion fortune (#707).

And then there’s this name at #173: Ted Rogers of the eponymous Rogers Communications, the new owner of Citytv and what seems like a zillion other businesses ranging from cable to cell phones and magazines. Forbes says he has $5.7 billion to play with.

And just in case it seems like you don’t get anywhere with your attempt to save money, consider this: the magazine claims the list of billionaires has almost doubled over the past four years, with the collective wealth of the 1,125 currently in existence worth a combined $4.4 trillion.

Top 20 Billionaires

1) Warren Buffett
2) Carlos Slim Helu
3) William Gates III
4) Lakshmi Mittal
5) Mukesh Ambani
6) Anil Ambani
7) Ingvar Kamprad
8) KP Singh
9) Oleg Deripaska
10) Karl Albrecht

11) Li Ka-shing
12) Sheldon Adelson
13) Bernard Arnault
14) Lawrence Ellison
15) Roman Abramovich
16) Theo Albrecht
17) Liliane Bettencourt
18) Alexei Mordashov
19) Prince Alwaleed
20) Mikhail Fridman

For more on who they are and how they made their fortunes, click here

See the Canadian contingent here.

Photo credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images