After 13-years, Bill Gates is no longer considered the world’s richest man. Carlos Slim is his replacement, and it comes as no surprise as he is a Mexican telecommunications leader with a bank-busting net worth of $67.8 billion.
Bill Gates is worth a mere $59.2 billion, so the lead that Slim has is quite significant. Of course, if you’re gonna do a comparison like that you should also include philanthropy work. Bill Gates is reported to have given away more than $29 billion to charities since 2000, where Slim has decided to up his commitment from $4 billion to $10 billion over the next four years. That means in four years Slim will have donated 1/3 of what Bill Gates has already done by this year.
So what company does Carlos Slim own that made him so wealthy? It’s called América Móvil and offers telecommunication services around the world. There are more than 131 million subscribers, some of which reside here in the United States. In the U.S. it is not known as América Móvil, instead it is a subsidiary called Tracfone…ring a bell? That’s a popular pay-as-you-go service for cellphones which can be purchased in retail stores around the United States.
Around the world there are 946 billionaires according to the March 2007 report by Forbes, which combined have a net worth of $3.5 trillion. So where are you at on that list? 
Source: Times Online
Soon that list will be 947… mwuahhahahahhaha.
Too bad 99.8% of people don’t know who that guy is.
I didn’t.
When I saw the title of this article, I thought: "The founders of Google are probably the richest people on earth right now." I’d have believed that. But how come a Mexican telco leader has made so much money in so little time?
What do they do with all that money?
And what happened to Bill Gates thought he had 90 billion?
Love the Scrooge McDuck reference.
And to think, people lie, cheat and embarrass themselves on Reality TV everyday, for the chance to win .001475% what that man is worth.
I actually didn’t know who he was either until several months ago when analysts predicted that he would be passing Bill Gates soon.
That was kind of my thought as well, and it was even more surprising to see Sergey and Larry tied all the way at number 26…with a lot of “no-name” people before them.
At his peak I believe he had close to that much, but as I mentioned in the article he has donated upwards of $29 billion in the last 7 years.
Bet you can’t wait to be one of those people!
He worked hard on that image
ironic