World's Richest Person

It's that happy time of year again when we get to look at the Forbes rich list to see who is the World's richest person. In 2008, the top ten are:

Warren Buffett (US): $62bn
Carlos Slim (Mexico): $60bn
Bill Gates (US): $58bn
Lakshmi Mittal (India): $45bn
Mukesh Ambani (India): $43bn
Anil Ambani (India): $42bn
Ingvar Kamprad (Sweden): $31bn
KP Singh (India): $30bn
Oleg Deripaska (Russia): $28bn
Karl Albrecht (Germany): $27bn

How appropriate that we are doing inequality at the moment! Warren Buffett's earnings last year, for example ($10 billion) is equivalent to the earnings of HALF THE WORLD's population - the poorest half of course - the richest half earn a bit more than that.

So, Warren Buffett earned the same as 3,ooo,ooo,ooo people last year. But Warren is a nice guy and when he finally cashes in his chips, his money will be going to charity.

Bill Gates we all know, of course, and Carlos Slim owns most of the mobile telephone companies in South America. Lakshmi Mittal practically owns the world's steel industry.

Mukesh and Anil Ambani run Reliance Industries who make most of the world's textiles. KP Singh owns a good deal of Indian real estate - he's the world's richest estate agent. I predict that as the Indian economy expands, he may soon become the world's richest man.

Ingvar owns IKEA and Karl owns Aldi - the leading German supermarket chain. Finally, Oleg Deripaska practically owns all of the Russian aluminium industry.

By the way, the world's youngest billionnaire is 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. You see, all you need is one good idea - now where did I leave my design for the rotating bowler hat............