Associated Press Report:

Carlos Slim World's Richest Man

By LISA J. ADAMS

07.03.07, 6:39 PM ET

Has Bill Gates been knocked off the world's pinnacle of wealth? A respected Mexican journalist says magnate Carlos Slim may have supplanted Gates as the world's richest man, thanks to a healthy bump in the stock price for a mobile phone company Slim controls.

According to the calculations by Eduardo Garcia, who runs a financial Web site called Sentido Comun ("Common Sense"), Slim's worth climbed to $67.8 billion at the end of June. He calculated Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) founder Gates' worth at $59 billion in June.

In its annual list of the world's billionaires, issued in March, Forbes magazine estimated Slim's wealth at $49 billion, putting him in third place behind Gates, with $56 billion, and U.S. investor Warren Buffett, with $52 billion.

In an April report on its Web site, Forbes bumped Slim up to No. 2, estimating that his companies' worth had increased to just over $53 billion. Slim controls Mexico's largest fixed-line telephone company, Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, and owns other businesses involved in everything from construction and music to restaurants and cigarettes.

Garcia says Slim's growing fortune was helped by a 26.5 percent second-quarter increase in

share prices for America Movil (nyse: AMX - news - people ) SA, the largest wireless service provider in Latin America, which Slim controls.

Garcia's estimate of Gates' latest worth is based on a 5.7 percent second-quarter increase in Microsoft shares. But he acknowledges that his new calculations do not include possible gains in Gates' holdings outside of Microsoft, which Forbes says represent more than half of the software mogul's fortune.

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

In a statement Tuesday, Forbes did not comment on Garcia's report but said the magazine's next valuation of Gates' wealth will appear in September, in the annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans.

Slim's wealth won't be recalculated by Forbes until its next world billionaires list in March 2008, the company said. Slim spokesman Arturo Elias Ayub told The Associated Press that Slim does not pay much attention to these lists.

"As he has said many times himself, he is not in any competition," Ayub said.

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Blackstone to become biggest hotel concern with Hilton buy: consultancy

Wed Jul 4, 3:08 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Private equity giant Blackstone Group will become the world's biggest hotel concern with its purchase of Hilton Hotels Corporation, replacing Britain's InterContinental Hotels, the MKG Consulting cabinet said Wednesday.

The company will be adding Hilton, with more than 2,800 hotels and 480,000 rooms, to a list of hotels it has purchased over the past two years.

They include Westin Trianon Palace in Versailles, the US budget hotels Quinta and Lone Star France, it said.With the purchase of Hilton it

will have a total of some 600,000 rooms, of which 560,000 are wholly owned.

InterContinental Hotels, which has had the number one ranking for the past four years, on January 1 had more than 3,700 hotels and 550,000 rooms throughout the world.

It is followed in size by the American chains Wyndham and Marriott. Under the terms of the agreement announced Tuesday Blackstone will buy Hilton Hotels Corporation in an all-cash deal worth 26 billion dollars (19 billion euros), one of the largest such takeovers ever.