Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - World media have been celebrating International Women’s Day for much of the week, with stories about the progress made by women in the past 100 years, particularly in politics and economically. But women are conspicuously small in numbers on Forbes latest list of the world’s rich. You have to move beyond the first 10 to find a woman, and most of those in the top 20 are from the same US family, the Waltons of Walmart fame. Birgit Rausing, whose money comes from Tetra Laval, is described by Forbes as “living quietly in Switzerland”. She is part of a very small group of wealthy women whose money has almost always been inherited, the magazine notes, while men who have made their fortunes do so in family businesses to a much smaller extent.

The big news for the list is that Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico is now the richest of the world’s 1,011 billionaires, followed by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett of the US. And the fastest growing region for billionaires is Asia.

Nationalities: nine of Europe’s 25 richest people are Russian according to the 2010 list. Fifteen billionaries reside in Switzerland, with Ikea’s founder Ingvar Kamprad the wealthiest of them and number 11 worldwide in terms of wealth. Only nine of them are Swiss, with Ernesto Bertarelli and family, of Alinghi and formerly Serano fame, the richest of these. Two other Swiss billionaires live abroad, in the US and the UK.

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