In the last year’s Forbes Magazine’s Rich List, a 70-year-old Mexican telecommunications mogul, Carlos Slim, worth an estimated fortune of $53.5 billion, succeed in surprising Bill Gate’s $53 billion. That was a slim margin of $0.5 billion. Before that, Bill Gates had been the richest person for 14 of the past 15 years.

This year, the 71 year old Slim’s fortune leap-frogged by almost $21 billions to reach $74 billion. Bill Gates, 55, has become a distant second with $56 billion worth of fortune. That was according to the Forbes’ World’s Billionaires 2011.

Warren Buffett, 80, is placed third with $50 billion. Last year’s fourth place Mukesh Ambani, slipped by 5 places and is now 9th richest person in the world. Another Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, is in fifth place with the net worth of $31.1 billion. Facebook co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has climbed from 212th place last year to the 52nd place this year.

This year, it was a new record of maximum number of billionaires (a total of 1,210), that was an increase of 214 billionaires from the previous record of 2008. Is that a sign of economic recovery? May be!