30% fewer billionaires make Forbes’ richest people list

The meltdown of global financial markets slashed the ranks of the world’s billionaires by 30 percent in 2008, Forbes magazine reports in its annual tally of the planet’s richest people.

“The world has become a wealth wasteland,” Forbes declares in the billionaire report on its Web site. “Like the rest of us, the richest people in the world have endured a financial disaster over the past year.”

Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates’ net worth dived to $40 billion from $58 billion a year earlier.

Despite that decline he reclaimed the title of world’s richest man, because two other billionaires lost more, on paper, than Gates did.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren E. Buffett, who was No. 1 on last year’s list, sank to No. 2 as his net worth plunged to $37 billion from $62 billion.

And Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim Helu fell to No. 3, with wealth of $35 billion, down from $60 billion.

Overall, the number of billionaires fell to 793 from 1,125 a year ago, Forbes said. Their collective net worth: $2.4 trillion, a drop of $2 trillion.

After Gates, Buffett and Slim, here’s how the list of the 10 richest people rounds out (name, source of wealth, and 2008 net worth):

No. 4: Lawrence Ellison, U.S. software giant Oracle Corp., $22.5 billion.

No. 5: Ingvar Kamprad, Swedish retailer IKEA, $22 billion.

No. 6: Karl Albrecht, German supermarket giant Aldi, $21.5 billion.

No. 7: Mukesh Ambani, Indian petrochemicals, $19.5 billion.

No. 8: Lakshmi Mittal, Indian steel, $19.3 billion.

No. 9: Theo Albrecht, German supermarket giant Aldi and the Monrovia, Calif.-based Trader Joe’s grocery chain, $18.8 billion.

No. 10: Amancio Ortega, Spanish retailing, $18.3 billion.