The World's Super Rich: what does the European Super Rich race Look like?

The World's Super Rich: what does the European Super Rich race Look like?

(*denotes family wealth)

1 Lakshmi Mittal* UK Steel (£27.7bn  2007 value) £19.2bn

2 Karl & Theo Albrecht* Germany Supermarkets (£25bn 2007 value) £19.1bn

3 Ingvar Kamprad Sweden Retailing (Ikea) (£15.5bn 2007 value)  £16.9bn

4 The Brenninkmeyer family Holland Retailing (£14.6bn 2007 value)  £10.2bn

5 Oleg Deripaska Russia Industry (£14bn 2007 value)  £6.8bn

6 Johanna Quandt* Germany Cars (BMW) (£13bn 2007 value)  £12.2bn

7 Bernard Arnault France Luxury goods (£12.8bn 2007 value)  £13.3bn

8 Roman Abramovich UK Oil, industry (£11.7bn 2007 value)  £10.8bn

9 Liliane Bettencourt France Cosmetics (£11.5bn 2007 value)  £10.6bn

10 Alexei Mordashov Russia Industry (£10.6bn 2007 value)  £5.7bn

11= Mikhail Fridman Russia Oil, banking (£10.4bn 2007 value)  £6.5bn

11= The Herz family Germany Coffee (£10.4bn 2007 value)  £8.6bn

13 Vladimir Lisin Russia Steel (£10.2bn 2007 value)  £7.3bn

14 Amancio Ortega Spain Fashion (£10.1bn 2007 value)  £12.3bn

15 The Mulliez family France Retailing (£10bn 2007 value)  £9bn

16 Stefan and Liselott Persson Sweden Retailing (£9.9bn 2007 value) £10.4bn

17 Mikhail Prokhorov Russia Metals (£9.8bn 2007 value) £6.9bn

18 Vladimir Potanin Russia Metals (£9.7bn 2007 value) £6.9bn

19 The Oeri/Hoffmann family Switzerland Pharmaceuticals (£9.2bn 2007 value) £8.5bn

20 Michael Otto Germany Mail order (£9.1bn 2007 value) £6.8bn

UK Rich List, Top 20 for 2008

Rich? UK has a host of billionaires that litter the top 20.

The rich = famous? Not really, most of the names in the UK rich list you most probably won't ever have heard of. Rich and powerful though they are indeed.

1 (1) Lakshmi Mittal and family £27,700m Steel

2 (2) Roman Abramovich £11,700m Oil, Industry

3 (3) The Duke of Westminster £7,000m Property

4 (4) Sri and Gopi Hinduja £6,200m Industry, Finance

5 * Alisher Usmanov £5,726m Steel, Mining

6 * Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli £5,650m Pharmaceuticals

7 (6) Hans Rausing and family £5,400m Packaging

8 (8) John Fredriksen £4,650m Shipping

9 (7) Sir Philip and Lady Green £4,330m Retailing

10 (9) David and Simon Reuben £4,300m Property

11 * Leonard Blavatnik £3,974m Industry

12 (12=) Sean Quinn and family £3,730m Property, Insurance

13 (12=) Charlene and Michel de Carvalho £3,630m Inheritance, Brewing, Banking

14 (15) Kirsten and Jorn Rausing £3,500m Inheritance, Investments

15 * Sammy and Eyal Ofer £3,336m Shipping, Property

16 (19) Vladimir Kim £2,987m Mining

17 (17) Earl Cadogan and family £2,930m Property

18 * Nicky Oppenheimer £2,870m Diamonds, Mining

19 (16) Joe Lewis £2,800m Foreign exchange, Investments

20 (11) Sir Richard Branson £2,700m Transport, Internet, Mobile phones

Above, the first number shows their rank in 2008

In brackets next to this is their position the previous year

The third field is their name

The forth field is the money worth on the books

And last is where their money has come from

Want to join their ranks? It'll be a long climb up the ladder - but don't stop dreaming, else you'll never step onto the ladder itself and will forever be in the rat race that life is

The World's Billionaires - the rich, I mean the real RICH people of the world!

After 13 years on top, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. That honor now belongs to his friend and sometimes bridge partner Warren Buffett. 

Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway stock, Buffett has seen his fortune swell to an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago. 

Gates is now worth $58 billion and is ranked third richest in the world. He is up $2 billion from a year ago, but would have been as rich--or richer--than Buffett, had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at the beginning of February. Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú now ranks as the world's second richest person with a net worth of $60 billion.

Warren Buffett is the richest man on the planet.

Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRK) stock, America's most beloved investor has seen his fortune swell to an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago. That massive pile of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, who was the richest man in the world for 13 straight years.

Gates is now worth $58 billion and is ranked third in the world. He is up $2 billion from a year ago, but would have been perhaps as rich--or richer--than Buffett had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO) 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. More than half of Gates' fortune is held outside of Microsoft shares.

Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú is the world's second-richest man, with an estimated net worth of $60 billion. His fortune has risen $11 billion since last March.

Buffett, whose fortune is estimated based on his stake in Berkshire Hathaway and assets he holds outside the company, refused to comment on his net worth.

The race for the title of World's Richest Man has been extremely competitive in recent months. Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway soared 25% between the middle of July and the day we priced our list. The stock hit an all-time high of $150,000 a share in December. At that time, Buffett was worth roughly $65 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway shares closed at $137,100 per share on Tuesday, down 2% since the announcement last Friday that the company's net earnings fell 18% in the fourth quarter of last year.

Gates' fortune also swelled massively last fall. Shares of Microsoft jumped 30% between late October and early November to $37 a share, only to fall after the company announced its intentions to buy Yahoo! for $45 billion on Feb. 1.

Slim's fortune has doubled in the past two years. Stock in his most significant holding, telecom outfit America Movil (nyse: AMX), has risen 120% since the beginning of 2006. Helú also owns stakes in Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

The son of a Nebraska politician, Buffett delivered newspapers as a boy. He filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle. He moved on to study under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia University.

Buffett began buying shares in textile firm Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and purchased a controlling stake in 1965. He began buying insurance companies and astutely investing those companies' cash reserves.

Today, Berkshire is invested in insurance (GEICO, General Re), jewelry (Borsheim's), utilities (MidAmerican Energy Holdings (other-otc: MDPWL.PK)) and food (Dairy Queen, See's Candies). It also has noncontrolling stakes in Anheuser-Busch (nyse: BUD), Coca-Cola (nyse: KO) and Wells Fargo (nyse: WFC). Recently, the company disclosed it owns a significant stake in Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT).

In December, the company purchased a 60% stake in the Pritzker family's manufacturing and services group, Marmon Holdings, for $4.5 billion. The privately held Marmon owns businesses across wire and cable, transportation services and industrial products.

Despite Buffett's meteoric rise, his days as the World's Richest Man are almost certainly numbered. He had long promised to give away his fortune posthumously. But in the summer of 2006 he irrevocably earmarked the majority of his Berkshire shares to charity, most going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the time, the gift was valued at $31 billion. However, assuming that Berkshire shares continue to rise, the final amount of the donation will far exceed that sum. Buffett gives 5% of his shares to charity every July.

In October, Buffett issued a challenge to members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, saying he would donate $1 million to charity if the collective group (or a significant number of them) would admit they pay less taxes, as a percentage of income, than their secretaries.

Days after issuing the challenge, Buffett appeared before Congress to encourage it to keep the estate tax. Armed with a few Forbes 400 issues, he told the hearing that "dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise."

The top 20 list:

1. Warren Buffett
   
2. Carlos Slim Helu
   
3. William Gates III
   
4. Lakshmi Mittal
   
5. Mukesh Ambani
   
6. Anil Ambani
   
7. Ingvar Kamprad
   
8. KP Singh
   
9. Oleg Deripaska
   
10. Karl Albrecht
    
11. Li Ka-shing
    
12. Sheldon Adelson
    
13. Bernard Arnault
    
14. Lawrence Ellison
    
15. Roman Abramovich
    
16. Theo Albrecht
    
17. Liliane Bettencourt
    
18. Alexei Mordashov
    
19. Prince Alwaleed
    
20. Mikhail Fridman