Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim retained his position on top of Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires today with an estimated worth of $69 billion. This places him ahead of Bill Gates at $61 billion.
Slim, 72, has taken the top spot for three years in a row, largely based on assets from his telecommunications empire.
In the third spot was US investment guru Warren Buffet, worth $44 billion; followed by France's luxury king Bernard Arnault, $41 billion. A newcomer to the top five is Spain's Amancio Ortega, the owner of the Zara fashion chain, whose net worth surged by $6.5 billion to $37.5 billion despite Europe's financial straits.
Despite the sluggish world economy, Forbes said, the billionaires' list grew - there were 128 newcomers while 117 dropped off, with an average net worth of $3.7 billion, unchanged from last year.
Larry Ellison of US software giant Oracle, Brazilian mining tycoon Eike Batista, H&M owner Stefan Persson of Sweden, Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing and Germany's Karl Albrecht, who owns the Aldi supermarket chain, filled out the top 10.
Five Irish people were placed in the latest Forbes rich list.
The richest Irish person, with a ranking of 96th and wealth of $9.7 billion is Pallonji Mistry. His company is famous for building two 60-story residential towers in Mumbai and he has holdings in Tata and Corus Steel, Jaguar, Land Rover and Tetley. He is listed as having Irish citizenship, but lives in Mumbai.
Denis O'Brien was the next Irish man on the list, coming in at 205th place, with a fortune worth $5 billion.
Campbell Soup's John Dorrance was next at 521 with assets worth $2.4 billion, followed by Glen Dimplex's Martin Naughton at 634 ($2 billion) and businessman Dermot Desmond at 853 with his personal wealth valued at $1.5 billion.
The most notable people to leave the list were Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Australian Gerald Harvey, executive chairman of the Harvey Norman discount retail stores, and Jim Balsillie, former co-chief executive of Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry.
The US was still the global centre of wealth, with 425 billionaires on the list. American billionaires dominate the top 20, with the two Koch Brothers and four members of the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart listed, as well as Las Vegas Sands casino owner Sheldon Adelson and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
But Russia and China outpaced the other old industrial powers in terms of concentrated wealth. There were 96 Russians on the list, led by steel and telecoms investor Alisher Usmanov, number 28 overall with $18.1 billion; and 95 Chinese, led by Robin Li, who as the head of the country's huge web service and search firm Baidu has earned himself a $10.2 billion fortune.
Behind them were 55 Germans, 48 Indians, 37 British, 37 from Hong Kong, 36 Brazilians, 25 in Canada, and 24 billionaires each from Taiwan and Japan.
Slim made much of his money as a telecommunications magnate who has expanded into retail, finance, commodities and energy. In recent years he has taken larger stakes abroad, owning parts of department store operator Saks, publisher New York Times and money manager BlackRock. In June he sold his stake in oil services company Bronco Drilling for a tidy profit.
Gates narrowed the gap with Slim this year after Slim's estimated net worth fell from $74 billion to $69 billion. Forbes estimated Gates' net worth rose from $56 billion to $61 billion.
