Carlos Slim Beats Bill Gates as World’s Wealthiest Dude

Posted: March 5, 2012

carlos slim beats bill gates

Did you know that Bloomberg ranks the world’s billionaires on a daily basis (no pressure!) and Carlos Slim has beaten out Bill Gates as the world’s richest man.

Rankings weigh each billionaire’s fortune accounting for market fluctuations and other factors, reporting back a result at 5:30 PM each day, Eastern time. As markets closed on March 2nd, Slim had edged out Gates and Warren Buffett, who came in at two and three, respectively. Eike Batista of Brazil is 10th, and when the March 2 rankings were announced, he reaffirmed his desire to be number one by 2015. Batista said:

“I’m competitive… It’s Brazil’s time to be No. 1. Brazilians have always admired the American dream. What’s happening in Brazil is the Brazilian dream and I happen to be the example.”

Batista has a $39 billion shortfall to make up if he wants to knock 72-year-old telecommunications mogul Slim off the top of the charts, however. And if you feel like you’ve fallen on hard times in recent years, billionaires don’t have it so easy, either- Slim’s fortune has dropped by 11% in the past fiscal year, if you’re tempted to look at your upside-down car loan and defaulting mortgage and feel badly about it.

In the billionaires’ ranking, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even make the cut- Bloomberg says that until Facebook goes public, he is unlikely to crack the top 15:

Based on a roughly $100 billion valuation the Menlo Park, California-based company has been trading at in the private market, Zuckerberg’s stake may be worth $21 billion, or about 25 percent less than previous estimates, once Facebook holds its initial public offering.

Nine of the top 20 richest people are Americans, and three of those are of Walmart’s Walton family.