Software king Bill Gates and storage supremo Larry Ellison have lost a fortune over the last year.

According to the annual Forbes magazine ranking the richest bloke was still Bill Gates, whose net worth was estimated at $50 billion.  However this means that he managed to lose $7 billion over the last year. His new chum in welfare projects Warren Buffett came second but lost $US10 billion  as his holding company Berkshire Hathaway suffered severe losses.

Oracle founder and CEO Lawrence Ellison was the only person on the top 10 list whose fortune remained unchanged.  He was ranked third and worth $27 billion. Generally the wealthiest Americans are getting poorer, losing $300 billion of their net worth over the past 12 months. (We will organize a charity event to help them out. sub.ed.)

The 400 wealthiest Americans had total net assets of $1.57 trillion, down from $1.27 trillion. It was only the fifth time that the fortunes of members of the Forbes 400 had declined since its inception in 1982.

Forbes attributed the loss of wealth to "faltering capital markets and real estate prices, along with fraud and divorce." Google billionaire Omid Kordestani looks like he will be knocked off the list after a costly divorce.