Bill Gates Takes Back Title Of World's Richest

Bill Gates is once again the world’s richest person, thanks in large part to a slide over the past few days in the price of Mexican stocks. Gates bumps Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim from his perch as world’s richest, a post Slim has held for the past four years. The swap happened at the end of the trading day on Monday, after America Movil shares dropped 0.24% from Friday’s closing price. That tiny shift–one quarter of one percent–dragged the biggest part of Slim’s fortune down by $82.7 million.
Meanwhile,MicrosoftMicrosoftshares rose 0.6%–yes, six tenths of one percent–from Friday’s closing price to Monday’s close, lifting this portion of Gates’ fortune by $88.4 million. With other holdings accounted for, Gates took the lead by just a hair, in billionaire terms: $140 million. Gates finished Monday’s trading with a fortune that Forbes estimates at $70 billion vs. Slim with $69.86 billion. Slim’s fall from the top continued on Tuesday, when shares of America Movil sank another 1.55% by day’s end, dragging that piece of Slim’s fortune down by $529 million. The price of Microsoft dipped only slightly in Tuesday’s trading, 0.6%. That sent Gates’ stake in Microsoft down by $96.8 million. All in all, the gap between the billionaires’ fortunes widened to $504 million- real money for most of us, but not much to these two. Gates ended the day with a fortune we estimate at $69.9 billion vs. Slim with $69.4 billion. It isn’t just Slim’s America Movil that has been dropping lately. Shares in five companies in which he holds major stakes– among themGrupo CarsoGrupo CarsoS.A.B. de C.V., Grupo Financiero Inbursa,Minera FriscoMinera Frisco, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo, and Inmuebles Carso–were all down from Friday’s market close to Tuesday’s close. For the 2013 World’s Billionaires List, Slim took the top spot with a net worth of $73 billion, while Gates came in at second richest with a net worth estimated at $67 billion. The men have long battled for the top spot on the net worth race (it belonged to Gates for nearly a decade and a half before Slim claimed it in 2010, as my colleague Kerry Dolan explains). But they’ve been teaming up on philanthropy. At the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi in April, Slim pledged $100 million towards Gates’ effort to end polio. The announcement marked the second time this year the pair have teamed up on philanthropy. In February, Gates joined Slim in Mexico to announcea philanthropic partnership aimed at improving agricultural research with the goal of reducing hunger. Neither man disclosed how much his foundation would dedicate to the effort. Forbes...