The top 10 richest people in the world have a combined worth of 342 billion dollars in 2010, up from 254 billion a year ago.

Here are the 20 wealthiest, as announced Wednesday by Forbes magazine in its annual list of the world’s billionaires:

1. Carlos Slim Helu and family. Mexico. Telecoms. 53.5 billion dollars.

2. Bill Gates. US. Microsoft. 53 billion dollars.

3. Warren Buffett. US. Berkshire Hathaway. 47 billion dollars.

The American national business magazine, Forbes, compiled and published the list of billionaires including the world’s wealthiest people as of the first quarter 2009, based on each person’s total net worth.

Bad news for rich people: last year there were 1,125 billionaires, but this year there are just 793 people rich enough to make the list that means a 30% decline from a year ago.

The world’s richest are also a lot poorer. Their collective net worth is $2.4 trillion, down $2 trillion from a year ago. Their average net worth fell 23% to $3 billion.

“Billionaire Bust”, is the red title on the cover of this month’s Forbes special issue that demonstrated how hard the crisis had struck on the richest people on the planet.

With 57 billion dollars net worth Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has recovered his spot at the top of the US money heap, displacing investor Warren Buffett as America’s richest person, Forbes magazine’s latest list reveals.

According to Forbes, whose list was published late Wednesday, the golden 400 have 1.3 billion dollars net worth or more. However, the assembled net worth of the richest Americans rose by only 2%, or $30 billion, to $1.57 trillion this year. The average net worth of Forbes 400 members is $3.9 billion.

Forbes said that rising oil and dizzy art prices fuelled the entry of 31 new members into the ultra-rich club and the return of eight previous members.

Bill Gates is now only the third richest man with a net worth of $58 billion. Mexican telecom mogul, Carlos Slim Helú, trumps Gates by $2 billion.

Had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo!, Gates would have kept the number one spot, which is now filled by Warren Buffet.

Naturally, the list had no shortage of Andrei’s, Sergei’s or Dimitri’s. However, it only places three Russian billionaires in the top 20.

Oleg Deripaska, Roman Abramovich, and Alexei Mordashov all share the title of “self-made” and each have made their fortune in aluminum.