Warren Buffett unseats Mexico's Carlos Slim as world's second-richest person

NEW YORK: Warren Buffett has become the world’s second-richest person after shares of Berkshire Hathaway reached a record high. The Omaha, Nebraska-based company has soared 27% this year as the dozens of operating businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profit (Bill Gates is the richest person). “The all-time closing high stock price today [Friday] is due to a widening appreciation of what Berkshire really is, a fortress,” Buffett biographer Andrew Kilpatrick said in an email on Friday.

With about $60 billion in cash at the company, “he could make a whopper of an acquisition at any moment”. Berkshire’s Class-A shares traded above $2,00,000 for the first time in August after a rally that followed the release of the company’s annual report, in which Buffett wrote that the company’s actual worth has been rising faster than suggested by metrics such as book value. Since that milestone, the shares have climbed another 13%, elevating Buffett’s fortune to $73.7 billion, $300 million more than Mexico’s Carlos Slim.

Berkshire’s performance dwarfs that of America Movil SAB, the mobile-phone company controlled by Slim, which is up 6% for the year. Mexico’s richest man needs to divest a large portion of America Movil assets in the country to reduce its market share below 50% and avoid profit-reducing penalties put in place as part of an overhaul of the nation’s telecommunications market. The new rules force America Movil to cut its fees and share infrastructure with its competitors. Barring a downturn in global markets, Berkshire should finish 2014 with a flourish. It agreed last month to buy the Duracell battery business from Procter & Gamble in a stock swap, and in October said it would buy Van Tuyl Group, the largest closely held US automobile dealer.