The Microsoft co-founder, American business magnate and philanthropist – Bill Gates – has regained the title of the world’s richest man in Forbes magazine’s billionaire list. The list of the world’s wealthiest individuals is published on an annual basis by Forbes and includes individuals like Warren Buffet, Charles Koch and Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. After falling down the ranks in recent years, Gates has managed to climb back to the top of the wealthy charts after a 4 year hiatus.
His rise back to the top of the charts sees Mexican Carlos Slim Helu and his family pushed down into second place with a net worth of $72 billion. Slim, who made his fortune with the help of his family and the extremely lucrative telecom industry, has been sitting pretty at the top of the richest billionaires chart for the last four years. Bill Gates was listed in the 2013 list as having a net worth of $67 billion, with that total rising over the last 12 months to $76 billion.
It’s extremely impressive that the Microsoft co-founder has managed to grow his personal fortune by approximately $9 billion in the last 12 months. However, what’s even more impressive is that he has managed to find himself sitting at the top of the Forbes money tree for 15 of the last 20 years. Over the last few years Bill Gates has taken a back seat at Microsoft, choosing instead to focus on his philanthropic and charitable work around the world. It’s recently been announced that he plans to dedicate more of his time working with product managers at the company that he helped build.
The Forbes Magazine list shows that Bill Gates isn’t the only businessman who has had a profitable 12 months. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has clearly had a profitable year, with his own personal fortune growing by $6.8 billion, giving him a net worth of $32 billion and placing him at number 18 in the world. That’s a big wow from our end for Bezos. The 1,645 billionaires across the world that find themselves fortunate enough to be placed on the list have an aggregate wealth of a staggering $6.4 trillion.
Just take a step back and think how many WhatsApp(s) you could buy for that? Or, how many luxury cars? Depending on your taste.
(Source: Forbes)
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