World's richest? Gates may have cashed it in

After 13 years as the world's richest person, Bill Gates appears to have been dethroned. But there will probably be no sobbing inside his Medina estate.

In fact, based on his past remarks, the Microsoft Corp. chairman might welcome the news.

Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim has taken the crown with a net worth of $67.8 billion, according to estimates by a respected financial news site in Mexico, as reported by multiple news services.

The main reason: a 27 percent surge in the stock price of Slim's wireless company, America Movil, in the second quarter.

At a Microsoft conference in Redmond last year, advertising executive and TV host Donny Deutsch asked Gates if he would be upset if someday he were no longer the world's richest man.

"I wish I wasn't," Gates replied. "There's nothing good that comes out of that."

"It's better than being second," Deutsch said.

"No," Gates replied. "You get more visibility as a result of it."

Slim's new standing might not be considered official until the next publication of Forbes' ranking of the world's richest people.

On this spring's Forbes list, Slim was just behind investor Warren Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, who had been second on the list for years.

In April, after the publication of the official 2007 list, Forbes reported that Slim had surpassed Buffett to become the world's second-richest man. At the time, Forbes reported that Slim was "breathtakingly close" to passing Gates for the No. 1 spot. Gates' estimated worth was $56 billion at the time.

For the latest estimate of Slim's worth, Reuters quoted financial tracker Eduardo Garcia, from Sentido Comun, an online financial publication in Mexico. Garcia estimates that Gates is currently worth $59.2 billion.

According to an Associated Press report from Mexico City, Garcia's estimate of Gates' wealth was based on a 5.7 percent increase in Microsoft shares in the second quarter, and doesn't include Gates' sizable holdings apart from Microsoft shares.

"But a 26 percent growth rate for a world company like America Movil, that's hard to top for one quarter," Garcia said, according to the AP report.

Gates has put a total of more than $30 billion into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reducing his personal net worth. Slim recently told The New York Times that he plans to boost the endowments of his companies' foundations to $10 billion in the next four years, from the current total of $4 billion.

Slim, meanwhile, seems just about as interested in holding the "world's richest" title as Gates was. The AP quoted Slim's spokesman as saying, "As he has said many times himself, he is not in any competition."