Mexico City – Has Bill Gates been knocked off the world’s pinnacle of wealth? A respected Mexican journalist says magnate Carlos Slim may have supplanted Gates as the world’s richest man, thanks to a healthy bump in the stock price for a mobile-phone company Slim controls.
According to Eduardo Garcia, who runs a financial website called Sentido Comun (“Common Sense”), Slim’s worth climbed to $67.8 billion at the end of June. He calculated Microsoft founder Gates’ worth at $59 billion in June.
In its annual list of the world’s billionaires, issued in March, Forbes magazine estimated Slim’s wealth at $49 billion, putting him in third place behind Gates, with $56 billion, and U.S. investor Warren Buffett, with $52 billion. In an April report on its website, Forbes bumped Slim up to No. 2, estimating that his companies’ worth had increased to just over $53 billion.
Slim controls Mexico’s largest fixed-line telephone company, Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, and owns other businesses involved in everything from construction and music to restaurants and cigarettes.
Garcia says Slim’s growing fortune was helped by a 26.5 percent second-quarter increase in share prices for America Movil SA, the largest wireless service provider in Latin America, which Slim controls.
Garcia’s estimate of Gates’ latest worth is based on a 5.7 percent second-quarter increase in Microsoft shares. He acknow ledges his calculations do not include possible gains in Gates’ holdings outside of Microsoft, which Forbes says is more than half the software mogul’s fortune.
“But a 26 percent growth rate for a world company like America Movil, that’s hard to top for one quarter,” Garcia said.
In a statement Tuesday, Forbes did not comment on Garcia’s report but said the magazine’s next valuation of Gates’ wealth will appear in September, in the annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. Slim’s wealth won’t be recalculated by Forbes until March, the company said.
