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Tomorrow (Wednesday, March 5) at 6pm ET, Forbes officially releases its annual list of the world's billionaires .. ranked primarily, of course, by net worth.
Or at least net worth as estimated by the editors of Forbes, since doing those kinds of calculations can be more of an art than a science, given the complexities of the very wealthy. They do a very credible job, though, and the Forbes ranking is about as close as you get to an "official" list.
Warren Buffett was number two on the 2007 Forbes list of billionaires. When the magazine crunched its numbers last March, it came up with a net worth of $52 billion for Buffett. That was an increase of $10 billion from the year before, despite some large charitable gifts.
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AP Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim could bump Warren Buffett from his number two position when Forbes releases its new list of the world's richest billionaires. |
Back in July, Mexican financial journalist Eduardo Garcia generated headlines with his declaration that Slim had overtaken Gates.
Last summer, Fortune magazine described Slim as the "richest man in the world" based on its own calculations, thanks to big increases in the value of Slim's holdings in companies like Telefonos de Mexico [TMX
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In a page one profile last August, the Wall Street Journal wrote about The Secrets of the World's Richest Man. The Journal noted that Slim might have become the first "person from the developing world [to] hold the top spot since Forbes started tracking the wealthy outside the U.S. in the 1990s." It also quoted Slim as modestly saying, "It's not a competition."
And in October, as it published its list of the 400 richest Americans, Forbes itself said Slim and Gates were in a "virtual tie."
Remember, Berkshire stock [US;BRK.A
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] had a pretty good year in 2007. And in the chart below, you can see that Berkshire (in blue) outperformed both Microsoft (orange) and Telefonos de Mexico (green) over the past twelve months. This is back-of-the-envelope stuff, to be sure, but we could see Buffett give Gates and Slim a good "run for their money."
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And even if he does lose his "I'm Number Two!" claim, I'm guessing Forbes will continue to describe Buffett as "beloved." We saw evidence of that in the thousands of emails we received for yesterday's "Ask Warren" extravaganza on Squawk Box.
Questions? Comments? Email me at
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