"Bill Gates is probably chuffed: he never liked being the world's richest man, and now he's down to third place behind his friend Warren Buffett and Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Hel=FA, according to Forbes magazine's latest list of billionaires.
Forbes says Gates "would have been perhaps as rich -- or richer -- than Buffett had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at the beginning of February. Microsoft shares fell 15% between Jan. 31, the day before the company announced its bid for the search engine giant, and Feb. 11, the day we locked in stock prices for the 2008 World's Billionaires list."
It's a win-win for Gates because Buffett is giving away most of his money via the Gates Foundation.
The Top 25 shows only four American billionaires and seven Russians. Oracle's Larry Ellison is 14th ($25.0bn) just ahead of Roman Abramovich ($23.5bn). "