Have they looked down the back of the sofa?
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.