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NEW YORK—Berkshire
Hathaway Inc. chairman Warren Buffett beat out Bill
Gates for the top spot on Forbes magazine’s annual list
of billionaires worldwide, ending a 13-year reign for
Microsoft Corp.’s cofounder.
Buffett’s wealth increased $10 billion to about $62
billion in the 12 months through February 11, mostly
from a gain in his company’s shares, Forbes said in a
statement released late Wednesday.
The
fortune of Gates, 52, rose $2 billion to $58 billion.
The Microsoft chairman fell to third on the list behind
Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim, 68, who
has an estimated net worth of $60 billion.
Forbes’s
list shows wealth expanding in emerging markets around
the globe, with Russia overtaking Germany as the
second-richest country, and 70 percent of newcomers from
Russia, India, China and the US. In 2006, half of the
top 20 billionaires came from the
US.
This year there were only four Americans.
Buffett,
77, is the biggest holder of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock
with about 32 percent of the Class A shares as of July
and 18 percent of the Class B shares as of December 31,
according to Bloomberg data.
The
company’s Class A shares rose 28 percent in the 12
months ended February 11. They now sell for $139,000
each, the most expensive on the New York Stock Exchange.
Buffett
built Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway during
the past four decades by investing premiums from
insurers such as Geico Corp., National Indemnity Co. and
General Reinsurance Corp. Buffett filed his first tax
return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for the
bicycle he used to deliver newspapers, Forbes said.
Gates in
November donated $695 million worth of his Microsoft
stake to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Shares of
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, of which
Gates owned 9.2 percent as of November, declined 2.7
percent during the period covered by the list.
Slim,
the son of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico, amassed his
fortune building Latin America’s largest
telecommunication carriers, according to Forbes.
Indian
steel entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal was fourth, and one of
four Indians in the top 10, the magazine said. Estranged
brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani, whose father founded
the Reliance Group of companies, were fifth and sixth,
and Kushal Pal Singh, who heads property developer DLF
Ltd., moved up 54 spots to eighth with $30 billion.
Ikea
founder Ingvar Kamprad was seventh with $31 billion,
making him the list’s top European, while
Russia’s
richest man, Oleg Deripaska, was ninth with $28 billion.
Retired German supermarket mogul Karl Albrecht was 10th
with $27 billion.
There
are 1,125 billionaires on the list from 54 countries and
one principality, or 179 more members than a year ago,
with a total net worth of $4.4 trillion, the magazine
said. The average worth of a list member is $3.9
billion, or about $250 million more than last year. The
top 20 members are worth at least $20.8 billion each, an
increase of $3.3 billion.
The list
also demonstrated the growing wealth of younger
billionaires, with 50 members younger than 40, 68
percent of whom were self-made.
The
average age dropped to 61—helped by Russia, where the
average of billionaires is 46, and
China,
where the average is 48, the magazine said.
China’s
richest person is 26-year-old Yang Huiyan. She is the
owner of property company Country Garden Holdings Co.,
listed at 125 with $7.4 billion.
The
youngest member on the list was Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg, 23, at 785 with $1.5 billion, the youngest
self-made billionaire ever to make a Forbes list.
The
world’s richest woman,
France’s
Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of the founder of the
L’Oreal SA cosmetics company, was 17th, with $22
billion. The average net worth of women on the list was
$3.7 billion. (With reporting from Seattle. Bloomberg) |
