Carlos Slim ahead of Gates, Buffett on Forbes rich list

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim has again topped Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires.

The magazine estimates that Slim, whose business interests range from telecommunications to construction, is worth $69 billion.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were placed second and third place, with $61 billion and $44 billion respectively.

Another American to make the top-10 is Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software group Oracle, estimated to be worth $36 billion.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg came in further down the list, at number 35, with $17.5 billion.

Slim, 72, has topped the list three years running, according to the BBC.

The list made big news in Australia, after it was announced that mining magnate Gina Rinehart had been ranked at number 29, with $18 billion.

Her fortune nearly doubled last year when she sold part of an undeveloped iron ore mine to a South Korean steel maker.

Rinehart is the only Australian included on the list: News Corp. boss mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who came in at number 106, was listed as American because he has US citizenship, his Australian media group News.com.au reported.

Among the new and "interesting" faces on the list, according to the New Zealand Herald, were Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and founder of electric car company Tesla Motors, who is the world's 634th richest person.

The widow of Apple's Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs, took his spot on the list.

And Sara Blakely, the founder of women's slimming undergarments company Spanx Inc. — and at 41, the world's youngest self-made female billionaire — also joined the list.

The United States again led the list with 425 billionaires, according to the ABC.

Russia overtook mainland China for the second spot, with 96 billionaires compared with mainland China's 95.

Steve Forbes said he was surprised to find only nine Chinese and Indian billionaires made the top-100 list, and that only one Chinese national made the top 10.

"What it tells us is there's a lot of churn, there hasn't been a lot of growth in the economy in the last year," he said, the ABC reported.

"The number of billionaires went up 16 but yet some regions go down, China went down a little bit, Russia went down because of weak commodity prices.

"But the fact is there hasn't been a lot of vigorous growth in the world and that's reflected on the list this year."