When I listed the top ten world’s richest people 2007, I noticed that the gap to the long-time world’s richest person, Bill Gates, was closing. True to those signals,  Forbes.com recently announced the top ten world’s richest people for 2008, and Bill Gates is no longer at the top. The richest people are (courtesy Forbes.com):

1. Warren Buffet … $62 billion
2. Carlos Slim Helu … $60 billion
3. Bill Gates … $58 billion
4. Lakshmi Mittal … $45 billion
5. Mukesh Ambani … $43 billion
6. Anil Ambani … $42 billion
7. Ingvar Kamprad … $31 billion
8. KP Singh … $30 billion
9. Oleg Deripaska … $28 billion
10. Karl Albrecht … $27 billion

A few interesting notable items:

• Only $4 billion separate the top 3; the top spot will probably be anyone’s to grab each year for a while.
• There are 5 new members in the top 10; with the fluctuations of world economics, the top 10 will most likely vary considerably in the future.
• Only 2 of the top 10 are Americans, while 4 are from India.
• Forbes identified a total of 1,125 billionaires in the world, representing a net worth of $4.4 trillion.

As of last year, Bill Gates had been the world’s richest person for 12 of the last 13 years. Now he has dropped down to number 3, and something tells me everyone else probably cares more than he does—people like me, who write up this list every year. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset that Bill Gates is no longer the richest person in the world—I won’t lose one minute of sleep over it—but I do think it’s fascinating to witness the accumulation and distribution of such gargantuan wealth. Each billionaire has a singular story which would provide fodder for many case studies on business success.