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.

Buffett tops Forbes’ list of richest people, replacing Gates, 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.

Indian steel entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal was fourth, and one of four Indians in the top 10, the magazine said. Estranged brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani, whose father founded the Reliance Group of companies, were fifth and sixth, and Kushal Pal Singh, who heads property developer DLF Ltd., moved up 54 spots to eighth with US$30 billion.

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was seventh with US$31 billion, making him the list’s top European, while Russia’s richest man, Oleg Deripaska, was ninth with US$28 billion. Retired German supermarket mogul Karl Albrecht was 10th with US$27 billion.

There are 1,125 billionaires on the list from 54 countries and one principality, or 179 more members than a year ago, with a total net worth of US$4.4 trillion, the magazine said. The average worth of a list member is US$3.9 billion, or about US$250 million more than last year. The top 20 members are worth at least US$20.8 billion each, an increase of US$3.3 billion. The list also demonstrated the growing wealth of younger billionaires, with 50 members younger than 40, 68 percent of whom were self-made.

The average age dropped to 61, helped by Russia, where the average of billionaires is 46, and China, where the average is 48, the magazine said. China’s richest person is 26-year-old Yang Huiyan. She is the owner of property company Country Garden Holdings Co., listed at 125 with US$7.4 billion.

The youngest member on the list was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 23, at 785 with US$1.5 billion, the youngest self-made billionaire ever to make a Forbes list.

The world’s richest woman, France’s Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of the founder of the L’Oreal SA cosmetics company, was 17th, with US$22 billion. The average net worth of women on the list was US$3.7 billion.

The full list of billionaires is available at List of billionaires forbes.com (2008)

Choosen to be Forbes The World’s Billionaires 2008 Font cover page- Patrice Motsepe entered the mining business when South Africa ended apartheid. Today the onetime lawyer and avowed capitalist is the country’s first black billionaire.