Bill Gates

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed Gates’ previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.

In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $7.1 billion on research and development in the 2007 fiscal year.

In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. Gates' previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks.

Gates has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development.

In addition to his love of computers and software, Gates founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world's largest resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.

Philanthropy is also important to Gates. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge.

Slim Carlos

The son of a Mexico City shopkeeper has built a staggering $59 billion fortune. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta tells the inside story of how he made it to the top.

I remember there was a time when the value of his enterprises was very low," recalls Patrick, the youngest son of Carlos Slim Helú. It was the early 1980s, and Mexico was in the depths of a massive financial crisis. Periodically the elder Slim would round up his three teenage sons for an economics lesson. Sitting them down in the living room of the family home, Slim would produce a single handwritten list. One line would show, for instance, how a Mexican insurance company was selling for far less than a similar American insurer. Another would show that compared with European candy or cigarette makers, Mexican manufacturers were drastically undervalued. "It was a very, very long time ago," says Patrick, "but I absolutely remember him teaching us at an early age."

For Slim, a onetime math instructor, this was no mere academic exercise. Yes, he wanted to instill in his sons the same lesson his father - a Lebanese immigrant who started acquiring real estate in Mexico City during the Revolution of 1910 - taught him: Though Mexico will have its ups and downs, don't ever count the country out. But Slim wasn't just teaching, he was buying. He spent $55 million on an insurance company. He took a stake in retailer Sanborns. He invested in a hotel chain.

Now those early investments are paying off big time. His three heirs - Carlos Jr., 40; Marco Antonio, 39; and Patrick, 38, run day-to-day operations at various Slim businesses and are increasingly making strategic decisions, while their father, who had heart surgery in 1997, pulls back. And Slim's investments in downtrodden Mexico? They laid the foundations of a sprawling, $150 billion business empire whose growth in recent months has turned Carlos Slim Helú into the world's richest man.

By our calculations, the 67-year-old Slim has amassed a $59 billion fortune, based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July. This number puts him just ahead of perennial No. 1, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is estimated to be at least $58 billion. But Gates is selling off his single greatest source of wealth, Microsoft stock, to fund his foundation, while Slim's fortune is growing at a stunning clip. His net worth jumped $12 billion this year alone. His family's holdings represent more than 5% of Mexico's 2006 gross domestic product, and Slim-controlled companies make up one-third of the $422 billion Mexican Bolsa, or stock exchange.

Portly and often puffing a cigar, Slim could pass for a latter-day Latin American J.P. Morgan. But with his dominant stakes in everything from phones to finance, his business profile more closely resembles that of John D. Rockefeller, who likewise thrived in a loosely regulated environment. (For the record, though, even in current dollars Rockefeller's wealth pales in comparison to Slim's: At his death in 1937, Rockefeller was worth $20.3 billion, representing one fifty-second of 1937 U.S. GDP.) The average Mexican encounters a Slim-owned business when she visits an ATM, drives a car, stops for coffee, and especially when she picks up the phone - Slim's Teléfonos de México controls 92% of the country's phone lines, and his América Móvil wireless service has a 70% market share. George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary, coined the term "Slimlandia" to describe how entrenched the Slim family's companies are in the daily life of Mexicans.

It's not a reverential term. Many Mexicans hoped privatization, which began in the early 1990s, would create competition and drive prices down drastically. That hasn't happened. "Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country's growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies," says Grayson. "The Mexican economy is highly inefficient, and it is losing its competitive standing vis-à-vis other countries because of people like Slim."

Fortune Global 500: América Móvil

"The accusations are not well-founded," Carlos Jr. fires back during an interview. He then pulls out an analyst's report showing how the average price of long-distance phone service in Mexico compares with that in other countries. Mexico is third cheapest, according to the report, behind the U.S. and Finland. (A recent study by the World Bank paints a different picture, showing that Mexico's rates for monthly service and residential phone hookups are among the highest in the developing world.)

Wooing the public isn't exactly a favorite activity for the Slims. "I think sometimes when you are successful in business," says Slim in heavily accented English, "you have others trying to turn public opinion against you because they are trying to compete with you." Slim, however, is beginning to court public opinion, pledging earlier this year to increase the size of his charitable foundations. Meanwhile, his sons are doing what the Slims do best: making more money.

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Anyone expecting to find monuments to the Slim financial empire in Mexico City - a gleaming TelMex tower jutting out of the skyline or an América Móvil stadium - would leave disappointed. In fact, América Móvil, Latin America's largest provider of wireless services, is housed in a converted tire factory. The juxtaposition of austerity and wealth can be quite odd, as evidenced by a recent visit to the headquarters of Inbursa, Slim's financial business. Just beyond the lobby is a makeshift art gallery that features a rotating selection of paintings on loan from the Museo Soumaya, a Slim-financed fine-arts museum named after his wife, who died in 1999. The room is a bit shabby. It is poorly lit and smells faintly of cigarettes; several large crates are propped against one of the walls. "We had several El Grecos here," Arturo Elias Ayub, Slim's son-in-law and spokesman, says matter-of-factly. There's also a folding table in the center of the room. "Mr. Slim sometimes likes to eat his lunch here," Elias adds.

"He made his billions because of an extremely close and advantageous relationship with the Salinas government," says professor Grayson of William & Mary. More recently Slim has been pragmatically investing in multiple parties, a common practice among Mexico's oligarchs.