Favorable economic factors and entrepreneurial endeavor swell ranks of the hyper-wealthy. The super-rich got richer and more numerous this year, according to Forbes magazine’s annual compendium of billionaires. The combined worth of the 691 U.S.-dollar billionaires came to $2.2 trillion as of 11 February 2005, up from the $1.9 trillion or so in collective worth of last year’s 587 verifiable billionaires.

Forbes attributes the rise in billionaire wealth -- up 16% over last year and an astonishing 57% over 2003 – to several factors, including stronger global stock markets, a weak U.S. dollar, higher commodity and real estate prices and, not least, the power of “old-fashioned entrepreneurialism.” About half the North American and European newcomers to the list “are entirely self-made,” the magazine notes.

A pair of stalwarts topped this year’s chart by a wide margin: with $46.5 billion Microsoft’s Bill Gates was number one for the eleventh year running, followed closely by Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet, who’s worth an estimated $44 billion.

This year’s come-from-behind king was Lakshmi Mittal. His 88% stake in London-based Mittal Steel, the biggest steel company in the world thanks to the merger late last year of Mittal’s Ispat International with Ohio’s International Steel Group, netted him a cool $25 billion and the number-three spot on the billionaires list. Forbes put Mittal in sixty-second place on its 2004 World’s Richest People list; he was 177 steps from the top in 2003.

New names on last year’s billionaire list include Chinese appliance store owner Wong Kwong Yu, who’s just 35, U.S. gas pipeline operator Daniel Duncan, and media magnate Martha Stewart. In all, 139 new names made the list this year. A few dozen fell off, either because their fortunes suffered, their wealth was determined to be family-owned or because they went to meet their Maker. Home Depot shareholder Kenneth Langone was one of several who found their ways back on the list this year after stock-price-induced periods in exile.

The 2005 crop of billionaires come from 47 countries, including, and for the first time, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Poland and Ukraine.

Click here to see the whole study. -FWR

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