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Those from this region featuring in the billionaire list include the Duke of Westminster, whose personal wealth is said to have risen from $11bn to $12bn, making him the 45th richest person in the world. Shop Direct owners Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay are ranked 421st richest with a fortune of $2.3bn.

Liverpool Airport owner John Whittaker, who lives in the Isle of Man, is ranked 616th with wealth of $1.6bn. As well as three regional airports, Mr Whittaker’s Peel Holdings owns the Port of Liverpool, the Manchester Ship Canal and the Trafford Centre.

There is no place in the list for any of the Moores family or Matalan owner John Hargreaves, who was previously thought to be a sterling billionaire.

Microsoft owner Bill Gates is no longer the world’s richest man, partly because he has given away a lot of his wealth to good causes, including Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires is topped by Mexican cement and mobile phone entrepreneur Carlos Slim, 70, whose wealth is put at $53.5bn, just $500m ahead of Mr Gates. US investment tycoon Warren Buffett is ranked third with $43bn. Russians, Chinese, Indians and Latin Americans feature strongly in this year’s list.

In contrast to Mr Hicks’s experience, the wealth of the world’s richest people generally rose last year on the back of a revival in the fortunes of the world’s stock markets. Prof Cannon said: “A lot of them took a big hit last year, so a lot of these figures reflect an adjustment back to health.”