Bill Gates is once again elected the world's richest man. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once again topped Fortune magazine's 2005 billionaire list. Gates has been the world's richest man for the eleventh consecutive year.
Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates was elected the world's richest man with a personal fortune of US$46.5 billion, slightly lower than the US$46.6 billion in the same period last year.
Genius investor Warren Buffett ranks second with assets of US$44 billion, and his personal assets in 2004 were US$42.9 billion.
Indian steel giant Lakshmi Mittal owns Mittal Steel (MT). In 2005, its personal assets were US$25 billion, ranking third.
Mexican telecom giant Carlos Slim Helu said this month that Verizon and Qwest's offers for MCI were too low.
His personal wealth is US$23.8 billion, ranking fourth.
In 2004, his personal wealth ranked only 17th; Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia ranked fifth; Ingvar Kampra, the Swedish founder of IKEA
Ingvar Kamprad rose to sixth place from 13th last year.
The number of billionaires rose to 691 from a record 587 last year, and their total wealth climbed $300 billion to $2.2 trillion.
Exiting the top ten billionaires include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and German supermarket chain operator Karl Albrecht; Oracle's Lawrence Ellison
) and Wal-Mart's S. Robson Walton returned to the top 10.
The other four Walton family members ranked 11th to 13th respectively, among which Alice Walton and Helen Walton once again topped the list of the richest with a wealth of US$18 billion.
A woman's title.
The five family members of Walmart founder Sam Walton have a combined wealth of more than $90 billion.
Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to 18 months in prison and his wealth shrank to $12.8 billion, making him the biggest loser on the list.
The biggest financiers are Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both of whom have a fortune of around US$1 billion and were named to the billionaire list for the first time last year.
Of the 131 new billionaires born in 2004, 68 were female billionaires (up from 53 last year), including Martha Stewart, whose fortune climbed to $1 billion.
Martha Stewart's wealth grew even though she admitted lying about selling her stock and served five months in prison.
"Fortune" magazine stated that the above wealth rankings calculated the wealth value on February 11 and the market value of publicly listed stocks on that day.