Gates still tops the world’s 946 Billionaires rich list – but not for long

March Forbes magazine does great lists. This week it published a list of the world’s richest people and found there are a record 946 billionaires on the planet and Bill Gates is still numero uno – in a world where success is equated with the accumulation of dollars, no-one plays the game quite as well as Gates, who also donates more money to charity than anyone else in history. Gates has been the world’s richest man for 13 years but could lose the mantle to Mexican Carlos Slim Helu who added an astonishing US$19 billion to his net worth in 2006 and is now just US$7 billion shy of top spot. This year, there were 178 new billionaires and 32 who dropped off the list. The average billionaire is 62 years old, two years younger than in 2005 and 60% of list members made their fortune from scratch. The whole fascinating story can be found here.