Forbes tightened the criteria for its rankings this year by including only the working rich.'' Listed are billionaires who have built their own fortune or are working with their inheritance rather than the silver-spoon set that is living off its wealth, forbes said in its July 6 issue, which was released on Sunday.

While fighting a government antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, the world's largest software company, Gates easily fended off rivals to his billionaires' throne.

The combined riches of five people -- the heirs of wal-Mart founder Sam walton -- still fell $3 billion short to rank no. 2 with 448billion.

The wealthiest individual on the list behind Gates was Sageinvestor Warren Buffett, no. 3 at $33 billion.

Rounding out the top five were Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at $21 billionand Canada's Kenneth Thomson, head of publishing giant Thomson Corp., at $14.4 billion.

One notable new member of this year's list was the family of former Indonesian President Suharto, whose 32 years in power enabled him to amass stakes in about 3,200 Indonesian companies and a family fortune of about $4 billion, Forbes said.

The new criteria dropped several billionaires from the list, including the $15.3 billion Quandt family of Germany, a majority shareholder of BMW who ranked no. 10 last year L'oreal's founding Bettencourt family of France, worth $11.4 billion and sisters Barbara Cox Anthony and Anne Cox Chambers, $7.1 billion heirs of the U.S. Media company Cox Enterprises. The 12th annual list, which excludes dictators and royalty, is acompanion to Forbes' oft-quoted rankings of the 400 richest Americans, which is slated for its Oct. 12 issue.

If royalty were included among the top billionaires, the Sultanord Branson at $1.9 billion and Japanese real estate and transportation mogul YoshiakiTsutsumi, once the world's richest businessman, at $5.7 billion.

The average net worth of the top 200 billionaires was $4.7 billion, up from $3.9 billion dollars in 1997.