MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Forbes: Buffett dethrones Bill Gates as world's richest

After thirteen years on top, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. That honor now belongs to his friend and sometimes bridge partner Warren Buffett, according to a report from Forbes magazine.

Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway stock, Buffett has seen his fortune swell to an estimated 62 billion US dollars, up 10 billion from a year ago. Gates is now worth 58 billion and is ranked third richest in the world. He is up 2 billion from a year ago, but would have been as rich--or richer--than Buffett, had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at the beginning of February. Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú now ranks as the world's second richest person with a net worth of 60 billion US dollars. His fortune has risen 11 billion since last March. Microsoft shares fell 15% between Jan. 31, the day before the company announced its bid for the search engine giant, and Feb. 11, the day Forbes locked in stock prices for the 2008 World's Billionaires list. More than half of Gates' fortune is held outside of Microsoft shares. The race for the title of World's Richest Man has been extremely competitive in recent months. Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway soared 25% between the middle of July and February. The stock hit an all-time high of 150,000 US dollars a share in December. At that time, Buffett was worth roughly 65 billion. Slim's fortune has doubled in the past two years. Stock in his most significant holding, telecom outfit America Movil has risen 120% since the beginning of 2006. Helú also owns stakes in Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa. The son of a Nebraska politician, Buffett delivered newspapers as a boy. He filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a 35 US dollars deduction for his bicycle. He moved on to study under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia University. Buffett began buying shares in textile firm Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and purchased a controlling stake in 1965. He began buying insurance companies and astutely investing those companies' cash reserves. Today, Berkshire is invested in insurance, jewelry, utilities and food. It also has non-controlling stakes in Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo. Recently, the company disclosed it owns a significant stake in Kraft Foods. In December, the company purchased a 60% stake in the Pritzker family's manufacturing and services group, Marmon Holdings, for 4.5 billion US dollars. The privately held Marmon owns businesses across wire and cable, transportation services and industrial products. Despite Buffett's meteoric rise, his days as the World's Richest Man are almost certainly numbered. He had long promised to give away his fortune posthumously. But in the summer of 2006 he irrevocably earmarked the majority of his Berkshire shares to charity, most going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the time, the gift was valued at 31 billion US dollars. However, assuming that Berkshire shares continue to rise, the final amount of the donation will far exceed that sum. Buffett gives 5% of his shares to charity every July. In October, Buffett issued a challenge to members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, saying he would donate one million to charity if the collective group (or a significant number of them) would admit they pay fewer taxes as a percentage of income, than their secretaries. Days after issuing the challenge, Buffett appeared before Congress to encourage it to keep the estate tax. Armed with a few Forbes 400 issues, he told the hearing that "dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise". The Forbes list of the top twenty follows, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim Helu, William Gates III, Lakshmi Mittal (India), Mukesh Ambani (India), Anil Ambani (India), Ingvar Kamprad (Sweden), KP Singh (India), Oleg Deripaska (Russia), Karl Albrecht (Germany), Li Ka-shing (Hong Kong), Sheldon Adelson (US), Bernard Arnault (France), Lawrence Ellison (US), Roman Abramovich (Russia), Theo Albrecht (Germany), Liliane Bettencourt (France), Alexei Mordashov (Russia), Prince Alwaleed (Saudi Arabia) and Mikhail Fridman (Russia).-