Hancock Prospecting owner Gina Rinehart must be on a roll this week after scoring two back-to-back victories. After losing her shares in the Rhodes project last week to Wright Prospecting, she accepted the flag of surrender from recalcitrant daughter Hope Welker over the weekend and retained the richest person in Australia title.

Ms Rinehart's $17 billion personal fortune placed her 36th place on the world's billionaire list released annually by Forbes Magazine.

She has been criticised, however, for her views on wages and creating wealth because hers actually was inherited mainly from her father Lang Hancock, although she did her fair share in growing the mining company.

However, Ms Rinehart no longer holds the title of world's richest woman, which is now held by L'Oreal heiress Lilliance Bettencourt who got back into the top 10 circle with a fortune of $30 billion.

Other Australians on the list are newspaper publisher Rupert Murdock (91st place, $11.2 billion), James Packer (198th place, $6 billion), miner Andrew Forrest (211th place, $5.7 billion), Frank Lowy (229th place, $5.3 billion) and Harry Triguboff (267th place, $4.5 billion).

Still on first place is Mexican telecom owner Carlos Slum Helu who has $73 billion. He is followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with $67 billion, and by Amancio Ortega ($57 billion) and Warren Buffett ($53.3 billion).

Here is a list of the other billionaires in this video.

The list has 210 new billionaires, bringing to 1,400 the total number. The bulk of the billionaires are in the U.S. (442), followed by Asia-Pacific (386), Europe (366), the Americas (129) and Middle East and Africa (103).

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is 66th on the list with a wealth of $13.3 billion. He and his former roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, are two of 23 billionaires under 40 years old. Mr Moskovitz, who rides a pushbike to work at software firm Asana, where he is CEO, is worth $3.8 billion.

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