Buffet returns Gates his title of “The richest” in the Forbes ranking

Forbes magazine’s annual ranking has given back the title of world’s richest person to Bill Gates after his 13 year “ownership” of the title was taken away by Warren Buffett. 

Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp. chairman, 53, showed a net worth of $40 billion this year, down from $58 billion in 2008. Buffet, 78 with his wealth dropping to $37 billion from $62 billion previous year, returned to the second place. Third and fourth places this year were occupied by Telefonos de Mexico SAB controller, Slim (with $35 billion) and chief executive of Redwood City, California-based software maker Oracle Corp, Ellison (with $22.5 billion). 

The number of billionaires this year fell to 793 from 1,125 last year. That was the first time when the number of billionaires on the list decreased since 2003, and the decrease amount is a record high since the magazine began the ranking 23 years ago. The total net worth of the billionaires has also decreased, from $4.4 trillion last year to $2.4 trillion. The average wealth of billionaires came to $3 billion from $3.9 billion. 

Some of the statistics relating to this year’s Forbes ranking would be: the net worth of 656 billionaires on the list decreased and only of 44 increased this year from the last year results; the number of new billionaires added to the list fell from 226 last year to 38 in 2009 and 355 people dropped off the list; this year there were 72 women on the list (99 last year); the average age of the billionaires rose to 63.7 years old from 61 in 2008.