Special Report: OC’s Wealthiest,The 20 wealthiest OCers
OC’s Wealthiest Span Tech to Trash, Family Fortunes to Amassed Empires
When it comes to Orange County’s wealthiest, real estate is king.
But technology isn’t far behind.
Those who attribute their fortune to real estate make up nearly a third of the Business Journal’s listing of the county’s 20 wealthiest people.
Tech executives come up a notch higher at eight people on our listing, though their collective net worth is slightly smaller than their landed counterparts.
Above all, the list is dominated by entrepreneurs who have amassed fortunes by building communities and business parks, crafting chips, other electronics and software, setting fashions or building a better flashlight.
No. 1
Donald Bren
Chairman, owner, The Irvine Company
Estimated worth: $6 billion
What do you get when you combine a big chunk of Orange County land and a single owner? Very rich, or Donald Bren. Take your pick. The terms are synonymous.
With help from the technology slide, Bren easily tops the Business Journal’s list of OC’s wealthiest people, tripling his nearest competitors, Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli of Broadcom Corp.
The numbers for Bren are staggering.
As owner of the Irvine Ranch and chairman of The Irvine Company, he claims 32 million square feet of income properties and 50,000 acres of land still on the drawing board.
Company assets include 68 high- and low-rise buildings, 290 two- and three-story campus-style office buildings, three regional shopping centers, 27 neighborhood shopping centers and 25,000 apartments units. The list goes on.
Among the local gems are the 5,000-acre Irvine Spectrum, the Four Seasons Hotel Newport Beach and half of the 185-acre University Research Park.
In recent years, Bren has spread his attention beyond OC. He’s added prime property in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego. Recent estimates have Bren’s Silicon Valley assets at 2.3 million square feet of commercial space and 3,700 apartment units. A year ago, he paid $350 million for Fox Plaza in Century City.
Bren’s personal inventory, according to records and sources, includes a house on Linda Isle and a new home under construction on Harbor Island, a Sun Valley ranch, planes and boats.
A generous giver to the University of California, Bren has endowed more chairs than any other single donor. He has given more than $21 million to UC Irvine alone. And he contributed 21,000 acres to the Nature Reserve of Orange County.
After completing his academic work in business administration and economics at the University of Washington, Bren entered real estate work, eventually forming Bren Co., a homebuilding business, in 1958. He also founded the Mission Viejo Co. and sold it in 1972 to Phillip Morris Cos.
In 1977 Bren was part of a group that acquired a controlling interest in the Irvine Co. In 1983, he bought out most of the partners for $518 million. In 1996, he took 100% ownership of the company.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 2
Henry Nicholas
Co-chairman, co-founder,
chief executive,
president,
Broadcom Corp.
Estimated worth: $1.85 billion
No. 3
Henry Samueli
Co-chairman, co-founder,
vice president, research & development,
chief technical officer,
Broadcom Corp.
Estimated worth: $1.8 billion
Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli found fortune after Broadcom Corp.,OC’s most valuable chip company,went public in a blockbuster 1998 offering. Each owns about 13% of the company, which counted a market value of $11 billion at a recent check.
The two have seen their stakes in Broadcom settle at about $1.4 billion apiece, down from $10 billion last year. For a while in 2000, the two held the title of OC’s richest people.
For our listing, we’ve put the two Henrys on at more than their Broadcom stakes to try and reflect other investments the two are reported to have made. Last year, each cashed out about $500 million in stock.
After factoring in taxes, we’ve put Nicholas slightly ahead at $1.85 billion to try and account for what our sources call smart investments in real estate and other areas, and less charitable giving.
Samueli comes in at $1.8 billion.
Whatever their precise worth, Nicholas and Samueli qualify for the runner-up spots on our listing based on their Broadcom stakes alone. The two engineers have emerged as poster executives for OC’s high-tech prowess, and the wealth it can bring.
For now, Broadcom, a maker of chips for networking gear and broadband modems, is weathering an industry slowdown. The company recently laid off 200 workers to help bring down costs and get business back on track.
After Nicholas let out that customer orders had slowed and the company was changing the way warrants given to customers are accounted for, Broadcom shares dived from 250 last fall to a low of around 20 in April, erasing most of the Henrys’ wealth on paper.
The stock since has rebounded to the mid 40s last week.
Both men have sold shares and seen deals dilute their ownership stakes, which are down from 17% apiece last year. Under the Henrys’ stewardship, Broadcom acquired a dozen companies in 2000, advancing into more markets.
Flamboyant, strident and hard-driving, Nicholas (“Nick”) is an athletic 6 feet 6 inches. He recently sat for a Worth magazine photo session with his shirt off.
Nicholas, a former Air Force Academy student, is partial to the fast lane with a penchant for skiing, scuba diving and exotic cars.
Parties at his 15,000-square-foot wired hilltop mansion are the bane of neighbors. He was Samueli’s first doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, before turning business partner.
He and wife Stacey have three young children. Last year the couple gave $1.24 million to South Coast Repertory Theatre.
Samueli and wife Susan have three children of their own. He donated $50 million to the University of California’s Irvine and Los Angeles campuses, which both renamed their engineering schools after him. The UCI medical school is also a beneficiary. Samueli recently gave $9 million to Temple Beth El and $10 million to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. He wrote a $1.5 million check for a new technology program at Chapman University.
Samueli has been described as an engineering genius. At Broadcom, he plays nurturer to Nicholas’ flogger.
Before starting Broadcom, the pair worked together at TRW designing ultra-fast integrated circuits for the military, then helped start PairGain Technologies.
,Andrew Simons
No. 4
Vincent Smith
Chairman, chief executive,
Quest Software Inc.
Estimated worth: $1.2 billion
No. 6
David Doyle
Founder, president,
Quest Software Inc.
Estimated worth: $775 million
They’re Orange County’s software odd couple.
David Doyle is reserved, the founder-technician, while Chief Executive Vinny Smith is outgoing and athletic. They became multimillionaires (in Smith’s case, a billionaire) when Quest Software went public in 1999.
Wall Street has boosted Quest’s market value this year as shares closed up 21% at recent check. The company now boasts a market value of more than $2.5 billion, up from $1.3 billion at the start of the year.
Quest counts $300 million in annual sales, with 700 OC workers and 1,700 in all.
Doyle labored for years to build a thriving business out of the once-obscure Irvine company. He co-founded Quest in 1987 with a business associate who later cashed out.
Things changed when Smith, an investor who had made his fortune founding his own technology company, grew bored with the Colorado ski slope. Smith took over for Doyle as chief executive in 1997 and was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000.
Smith spends much of his off time with his wife and two children, often on ski slopes. He says he still takes out the trash. Doyle likes to add to his 10,000-bottle wine collection (he converted a spare bedroom, bathroom and closet into a wine cellar for them) or driving his custom “canyon red” BMW 750.
The company says it is “very optimistic” about 2001 prospects, and says it is starting to operate more efficiently. It watched Oracle Corp. go from best friend to rival in the past six months after the database kingpin released the same utility software Quest makes. Quest is eyeing new markets for applications that work with Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. databases.
No. 5
George Argyros
Chairman, chief executive,
Arnel & Affiliates
Estimated worth: $1 billion
A diverse and accomplished businessman, George Argyros also has a high profile in local politics, playing a big role in the fiery El Toro airport issue.
Sometimes referred to as King George, Argyros now is poised to add a new title to his resume: ambassador to Spain. Argyros has been nominated to the post by President George W. Bush, a beneficiary, like many other Republicans, of Argyros’ political largesse.
But hold on: As is often the case with the fiery businessman-philanthropist, Argryos may have a fight on his hands. The nomination has been delayed while state Attorney General Bill Lockyer probes allegations that Argyros’ apartment company illegally withheld renters’ deposits.
As head of Costa Mesa-based Arnel & Affiliates, Argyros’ holdings include a majority stake in 5,400 Orange County apartments and more than 2 million square feet of office, industrial and retail properties in OC and elsewhere.
Major holdings include the 52-acre, 280,000-square-foot Metro Pointe retail-entertainment complex and the 356,000-square-foot Puente Hills Business Center in the city of Industry.
But real estate accounts for less than half of Argyros’ wealth. Stocks and venture capital investments through Costa Mesa-based Westar Capital make up the bulk. Our estimate for Argyros comes in at $1 billion.
An alumnus of Michigan State and Chapman University, Argyros has been chairman of Chapman’s board of trustees since 1976 and is the school’s leading benefactor. The business school and student center are named after him.
Adventurous and active, Argyros takes his yacht on ocean cruises, and is rebuilding his showcase vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho, which was heavily damaged in a fire late last year. Glamorous wife Judie is one of OC’s leading society figures. Argyros is the former owner of the Seattle Mariners and AirCal.
With Spain on the mind, a key question becomes, who will run point on El Toro?
No. 7
Jim Jannard
Founder, chairman,
chief executive,
Oakley Inc.
Estimated worth: $825 million
Jim Jannard may be one of Orange County’s wealthiest executives, but he’s no corporate suit.
The founder of Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc. has bolstered his fortune after a daring 1999 bet. Back then, corporate hand William Schmidt, a former Gatorade marketing executive, wanted to put the kibosh on Oakley’s money-losing footwear effort,a run at rival Nike Inc. Jannard refused to drop the line.
So Schmidt left as chief executive in late 1999, taking with him an $800,000-plus severance package. After having stepped back from Oakley’s daily operations, Jannard returned to the helm amid much second-guessing.
At the start of 2000, Oakley’s stock was trading at around 5 after a yearlong slide. The company’s footwear line was draining profits.
Jannard, a blunt, cigar-smoking University of Southern California dropout, upped the ante. In December 1999, he bought 200,000 of the company’s shares at the market price. The stake cost him about $1 million. Twelve months later, it was worth nearly $3 million.
The stock was recently up to 20, making Oakley a billion-dollar company (in market value) and making Jannard’s 60.7% stake in Oakley worth $800 million.
The fashion iconoclast splits time between OC and Spieden Island, Wash., a getaway he purchased in 1997 for $22 million. Spieden, once called “Safari Island,” was a hot spot for big game hunters, which have since lost their scent. Jannard stopped all hunting and has made saving rare Ryuku sika deer his personal game.
He encourages staff to push the envelope on design, his specialty. After an initial flop with spacey designs, the company unveiled a complete line of footwear last year, which is now profitable.
Other product lines, including prescription eyewear, apparel and watches, have shown double-digit growth this year. One new sunglass product, X-Metal, was backlogged all last year due to high demand.
“Where other companies are struggling to think outside the box we don’t even know where the box begins,” Jannard said at recent shareholder meeting, donning a funky headpiece with fake dreds shooting out the back.
Jannard is credited with making unconventional inventions tomorrow’s trendy styles.
He started in 1975 peddling motorcycle handle grips from his station wagon, moving on to goggles and then sunglasses.
Since 1996, Jannard has foregone a salary or bonus while buying back some stock. He is reclusive to the extreme, avoiding having his picture taken and rarely granting interviews.
He has opened a signature “O” store at Irvine Spectrum and an outlet store, Oakley Vault, with plans for more. The company earned $51 million on sales of $364 million in 2000.
“Bottom line for investors is our philosophy works,” Jannard says. “Sleep tight, Oakley is awake.”
,Jennifer Bellantonio
No. 8
John Tu
Co-founder, president
Kingston Technology Co.
Estimated worth: $800 million
No. 8
David Sun
Co-founder,
chief operating officer,
Kingston Technology Co.
Estimated worth: $800 million
David Sun and John Tu are Chinese immigrants who made their biggest fortunes after selling 80% of memory products maker Kingston to Japan’s Softbank Corp. for $1.5 billion back in 1996, then buying it back three years later for a fraction of that.
We’ve come up with our estimates for Sun and Tu by looking at those two deals, the company’s annual sales and what Kingston might fetch today. Memory may be in a slump, but our best calculation puts the duo at $800 million each.
The pair made national headlines in 1996 by handing out $100 million in bonuses to workers after selling to Softbank. More recently, the company laid off employees for the first time in its history to cope with the industry downturn.
The company has an estimated $1.6 billion in annual sales. It employs 1,700-plus locally, 2,000 worldwide. By sales, it is OC’s fourth-largest private company and the No. 2 computer hardware firm.
Thanks to the repurchase by Sun and Tu, Kingston once again is easily OC’s largest minority-owned company.
Tu is the soft-spoken public face. Sun is the boisterous operations man. They seldom wear ties, and they sit in cubicles with other employees.
Both Sun and Tu have electrical engineering degrees, Tu from Technische Hochschule Darmstadt in Germany, Sun from Taiwan’s Ta-Tung Institute of Technology.
Tu moved to the U.S. in 1972, Sun came in 1977. Tu and wife Mary have two children, as do Sun and wife Diana. Tu plays drums, is a movie buff, and likes to tell stories.
Sun is an avid golfer: He once challenged Sun Microsystems Inc. Chief Executive Scott McNealy to a golf match to settle a lawsuit.
In the early 1980s, the duo founded Camintonn in their garage and lugged around memory chips in the back seats of their cars. They became division vice presidents when AST Research Inc. bought Camintonn. They left AST to start Kingston in 1987.
They have investments in Personable.com, an application service provider that specializes in hosting Microsoft Office 2000 applications, and Payton, a Kingston sister company that does semiconductor packaging.
,Andrew Simons
No. 10
Anne Catherine
Getty EARHART
Heiress to J. Paul Getty
Estimated worth: $775 million
Anne Catherine Getty Earhart is the low-profile heiress and one of 16 grandchildren of late oil legend J. Paul Getty.
A Laguna Beach resident and financial contributor to environmental causes, she surfaced publicly back in 1992 when she and husband John Earhart, who headed up the Homeland Foundation of Laguna Beach, unsuccessfully opposed the San Joaquin Hills (73) toll road.
J. Paul Getty struck oil in 1953 and founded Getty Oil Co. in 1956. J. Paul set up the original Getty Museum art collection and endowed the J. Paul Getty Trust, which funds the Los Angeles museum and cultural center today.
In 1985 the settlement of a nine-year battle over J. Paul Getty’s will resulted in Anne Catherine and the two other daughters of his late son George Franklin Getty II sharing a $750 million trust. The 1986 sale of Getty Oil to Texaco for $10 billion gained each of the sisters about another $400 million each.
Anne Catherine, approaching age 50, has two children.
,Stephine Michrina
No. 11
Anthony Maglica
Founder, president,
Mag Instruments Inc.
Estimated worth: $500 million
He’s an immigrant success story and the flashlight king, whose products are popular with police officers, firefighters and mechanics, as well as the general public.
Anthony Maglica’s Ontario-based Mag Instruments Inc. counts 850 employees and is undergoing expansion that could create 2,400 additional jobs.
Maglica’s story was illuminated by an expensive palimony battle that went on for eight years. It finally ended last year when he paid $29 million to Clarie Maglica, 66, a woman who he never officially married, but who lived with him for 23 years, shared his last name, and worked with him at Mag Instruments. (Clarie headed the personnel department and was in charge of marketing and purchasing.)
In the 1970s, Maglica’s first (and official) wife received half of his assets in a bitter divorce battle.
By the end of the latest court fight, Mag Instruments had gone from $400 million to $750 million in valuation, according to Maglica’s attorney. We’re conservatively estimating Maglica at $500 million, allowing room for any debt, minority ownership and his palimony settlement.
Born in New York during the Great Depression, Maglica was raised in his mother’s native Croatia. He was a small child when his mother decided to return to Croatia where she had family.
Maglica returned to the U.S. in 1950, though he spoke no English. Most of his training came while working as an experimental machinist. By 1955, he managed to save $125 to buy a lathe and started his own machine tool business in a garage.
Maglica made precision parts for industry, aerospace and the military, earning a reputation for quality. Mag Instrument eventually incorporated in 1974. The company’s trademark flashlight was introduced in 1979. In 1993, Maglica rescued a blinded boy, his mother and sister from the war zone in Bosnia.
,Rajiv Vyas
No. 11
Igor Olenicoff
Founder, president,
Olen Properties
Estimated worth: $500 million
As head of a real estate empire with holdings in Southern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix and South Florida, Igor Olenicoff personifies the American ideal that anyone with a dream and a burning desire can realize their goals.
As a teen, Olenicoff landed in America in 1958 after his family fled Russia. After completing two advanced degrees from the University of Southern California, Olenicoff held various jobs, including with Shell Oil, Touche Ross, Motown Records and Dunn Properties.
This year marks the 28th anniversary of his forming of Olen Properties. Back then, Olenicoff said he believed Orange County was set for explosive growth and called it “the best place on earth to start a development company at that moment.”
At first Olenicoff said he set out to develop one industrial park and keep it forever (he still owns his first.) Olenicoff went on to develop nearly 80 office and industrial projects in Orange, San Diego and Santa Clara counties.
Olen’s commercial operations today span more than 4.5 million square feet in OC, 2,000 tenants and 380 buildings. The company also owns vacant land set to house another 1.25 millions square feet. Olen recently broke ground on a 100,000-square-foot project in Lake Forest, another two three-story buildings in San Clemente and completed a four-story building in Brea.
In the 1980s, Olen diversified into housing. Today Olen Residential owns more than 10,000 apartments with another 1,000 or so under development annually.
Olenicoff said he is just as bullish on OC now as he was nearly three decades ago.
“Orange County’s future is still as bright and fertile for development as ever,” he said. “Continued appreciation in the coming years will prove even more productive.”
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 13
Steve Johnson
Founding partner,
chief executive,
Sage Hill Partners;
Co-founder,
Johnson-Grace Co.
Estimated worth:$400 million
You’ve got money.
At least Steve Johnson did after he sold his Johnson-Grace Co. to what’s today AOL-Time Warner Inc. in 1996 for $70 million in stock. Shares catapulted some 5,000% in value since and made Johnson one of OC’s wealthiest. Our estimate is a conservative one based on input from sources.
He started Johnson-Grace in 1992 with partner Christopher Grace in a Newport Beach garage with $75,000 in seed money. He had planned on a public offering for 4-year-old Johnson-Grace, but found the AOL deal much more lucrative.
“It was kind of inviting to imagine we could have been like Netscape,” Johnson said at the time. “We were optimistic that Johnson-Grace would do a successful IPO, and that is the reaction we got from the investment banking community.”
After AOL acquired Johnson-Grace, Johnson worked as vice president of technology development at AOL until mid-1999. Now he heads Sage Hill Partners, a firm that specializes in investing and advising early-stage Internet companies.
Johnson graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1980 and received a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University in 1985, where he continued in the doctoral program until 1990.
Johnson holds a U.S. patent, issued in 1999, for the image compression technology currently used in AOL’s service.
He splits his time between the coasts. He owns houses in Newport Beach and Cambridge, Mass., but his family lives in Massachusetts. He often comes to OC for long stretches of time. He sits on the board of Irvine-based Go2 Systems Inc.
No. 14
James Slavik
President, director,
Mark IV Capital Inc.;
director, W.W. Grainger Inc.
Estimated worth: $350 million
James Slavik is a low-profile businessman with long-running family ties to W.W. Grainger Inc., the Lake Forest, Ill.-based electric equipment distributor.
He’s following in his father’s footsteps: Elmer Slavik, who died in 1987, also sat on Grainger’s board and ran Newport Beach-based Mark IV Capital Inc., a real estate and corporate investment firm. James Slavik is chairman and president of Mark IV Capital.
James Slavik controls and has sole voting power over nearly 8 million Grainger shares, though the bulk of those are jointly owned by family members and family-controlled corporations.
Slavik has said the wealth represented by the Grainger shares is spread out and shouldn’t be attributed to him.
As with other stockholders on the listing, though, we’ve assigned shares held in trusts or corporations to the person that the Securities and Exchange Commission lists as the beneficial owner.
In April, Slavik’s Mark IV Capital bought nearly 3 acres in Laguna Woods’ Town Centre for $1.5 million and plans to break ground on a 40,000-square-foot, three-story medical office building this summer.
The company also is a partner in a 350,000-square-foot industrial and technology park in Northern California’s Roseville.
In the 1980s, Slavik was an investment real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate Services.
Last year, Slavik, an aviation buff, was named as a director of Aliso Viejo-based eJets, a company founded in 1999 out of Scott Blum’s ThinkTank that offers online private air travel booking services. He’s also a director of Kentucky’s Mountain Capital Corp.
Slavik was elected a Grainger director in 1987 and is chairman of the company’s affairs and nominating committee.
No. 15
Allen Chao
Chairman, chief executive,
president,
Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Estimated worth: $300 million
Orange County resident Allen Chao runs drug maker Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. just over the county line in Corona.
The company focuses on generic drugs, and, like other pharmaceutical companies, has seen its fortunes rise on Wall Street. At recent check, Watson’s market value was closing in on $7 billion. Chao’s stake is worth a rounded $300 million
The drug maker employs around 3,000 people companywide. Among its products are generic forms of the painkiller Vicodin and thyroid medication Synthroid. The latter has landed Watson in a tussle with Abbott Laboratories Inc.
Chao became Watson’s chairman in 1996. Before Watson, the executive’s background included being director of pharmaceutical technology and packaging development at Searle Laboratories Inc. from 1979 to 1983, having overall responsibility for new product implementation and new pharmaceutical technology development.
Chao and his family are known for their philanthropic efforts on behalf of healthcare-related causes. The comprehensive cancer center at UCI Medical Center in Orange bears his family’s name. Along with brother Richard and sisters Phyllis Hsia and Agnes Kung, Chao donated $8.1 million to the university in 2000 to fund research into the genetic causes and treatment of cancer, particularly among Asian-Americans.
In published reports, Chao said the gift was particularly connected to his personal experience and he wanted to share knowledge he gained that prevention was “extremely important” to cancer patients.
Chao was successfully treated for stomach cancer at UCI in 1999. Before last year’s gift, the family had given $5.7 million to the university in a series of gifts that included creating the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Chao, whose family came to the U.S. from Taiwan, received a doctorate in industrial and physical pharmacy from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., in 1973.
, Vita Reed
No. 15
Joan Irvine Smith
Heiress to James Irvine
Estimated worth: $300 million
The 67-year-old heiress to the Irvine Ranch, Smith is the great-granddaughter of early Orange County land baron James Irvine and had a seat on The Irvine Company board, pre-Donald Bren.
In 1983, Smith tried to block Bren from buying the company after he offered to buy Smith out for $114.6 million. Smith declared the offer too low.
Eight years later, Smith accepted a legal settlement giving her $256 million,half of which she gave to her now-deceased mother, Athalie Clarke.
She has given millions of dollars to the University of California, Irvine, where she directs proceeds to the College of Medicine from the Oaks International, a major equestrian competition she hosts at her home, The Oaks, a horse ranch in San Juan Capistrano.
She reportedly also has donated millions to environmental causes like water research and supported environmentalists who opposed the building of a $35 million oceanfront resort in Crystal Cove State Park.
She owns Joan Irvine Smith Fine Arts Inc. in Laguna Beach.
Smith reportedly threatened to disown her youngest son, Morton Smith, in 1994 when he married his college sweetheart, Marianne Campbell, then a pediatric nurse. In statements to the press at the time, Morton put his mother’s worth at $500 million. Family relations have thawed since, sources say.
Joan Irvine Smith recently put up for sale a 2-acre parcel in Irvine Cove, where she grew up. The asking price for the blufftop property: $40 million, one of the highest in OC history.
No. 17
Kosti Shirvanian
Founder, Western Waste Management
Estimated worth: $275 million
Trash pays.
Linda Isle resident Kosti Shirvanian grew a one-truck operation into a big regional trash hauler, Western Waste Industries of Torrance, which merged into USA Waste Services in 1996, which in turn merged into Waste Management Inc. in 1998.
While Shirvanian’s stake in Waste Management has registered as high as $500 million, he comes in on our list at about $275 million, based on a recent check.
In the 1950s, the Iranian immigrant of Armenian descent started picking up trash in a battered Chevy truck.
He had planned to become a medical student but instead said he enlisted by accident in the U.S. Army.
Shirvanian ended up serving an 18-month stint in Korea, where he saw combat action as a medic.
Shirvanian came to Southern California in 1955, where he and his sister, Savey Tufenkian, started a scavenging business around the time that many Armenians were setting up small waste-hauling companies. Shirvanian drove the truck, she did the books.
The Shirvanin trash empire grew when he bought a rival’s route for about $800. By the 1990s, Western Waste was a regional player with more than 1,500 employees and a fleet of orange trash trucks. Yearly revenue at one point neared $300 million.
Then came the acquisition by USA Waste Services of Dallas for $525 million in stock. Under the deal, Western became a subsidiary of USA Waste, and, eventually, Waste Management.
At one point, Shirvanian was a vice chairman and director of USA Waste.
Those who know Shirvanian call him an astute businessman.
In 1996, Shirvanian came under scrutiny from FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents conducting a probe of suspected political corruption and bribery at Western Waste.
The company came up in the extortion trial of former Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore.
Her conviction came after a Western Waste vice president pleaded guilty to arranging for the company to pay $150,000 for a worthless parcel of land in Louisiana to obtain a landfill permit near Baton Rouge, according to press accounts at the time.
,Michael Lyster
No. 18
William Gross
Chief investment officer,
managing director,
Pacific Investment Management Co.
Estimated worth: $250 million
Bill Gross is a superstar fund manager who helped guide PIMCO to become the largest bond manager, with assets of $220 billion under management.
The Business Journal is conservatively estimating Gross’ wealth at around $250 million. He had an estimated 8% equity stake (shares of which were owned by Pacific Life, but Gross received dividend and capital gains) in PIMCO before the company was bought in 2000 by Allianz AG for $3.3 billion.
The PIMCO stake would have given Gross $264 million before taxes. Plus, Gross signed a $200 million, five-year package deal as a retention bonus after the Allianz buy.
For his stake in PIMCO, he is said to have received $1 million every quarter in dividends before Allianz bought it, according to sources.
Gross was a leader in the formation of PIMCO Advisors in 1994, which was spun off from Pacific Mutual Life Insurance (now Pacific Life Insurance).
He is a widely acclaimed, oft-quoted bond manager, dubbed “Baron of Bonds” by Barron’s. In 2001, Gross and his team won the Morningstar Fixed Income manager award, making him the only money manager to win the award twice.
TV shows, wire agencies, newspapers feature him regularly for commentary on economy, bonds, Alan Greenspan and interest rates. He broadcasts market commentaries from PIMCO’s own TV studio in Newport Beach.
Gross also is a writer: His monthly “Investment Outlook” on PIMCO’s Web site has a huge following. In 1997 he authored “Everything You’ve Heard About Investing is Wrong.”
Gross has a 21-year record of outperforming the bond market by an average of 1.25% annually. He is the first portfolio manager inducted into the Fixed-Income Analysts Society, 1996. At work, he turns on the lights on in the morning and turns them off at night.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Duke, a masters in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a jogger and a yoga student.
Gross funded the James Hines Foundation, which contributes $100,000 annually to Orange County Teachers of the Year. He donated $1.5 million to the Sage Hills private school in Newport Beach. He collects stamps as a hobby.
,Rajiv Vyas
No. 19
Jeanette Segerstrom
Managing co-partner,
C.J. Segerstrom & Sons
Estimated worth: $250 million
When Hal Segerstrom died in 1994, his widow, Jeanette, inherited his stake in the family business, now estimated at 50%.
Today, Jeanette Segerstrom, along with Henry Segerstrom, Hal’s brother, are managing partners of that company,C.J. Segerstrom & Sons,developer and owner of South Coast Plaza. With the 1997 passing of Henry’s mother, Nellie Ruth, C.J. Segerstrom now stands as a partnership of Henry and Jeanette, though she is said to have a larger stake. Henry is the operational head of the company and its public face; his stake, diluted by a long-ago divorce settlement, is said by sources to be closer to 25%.
The Segerstrom’s crown jewel is South Coast Plaza, believed to be the first shopping center in the county to have topped $1 billion in sales in a single year.
The company’s retail holdings exceed 2.7 million square feet. The company also owns two high-rises,Plaza Tower and Center Tower,in the Town Center business district of Costa Mesa. Other holdings include a partnership with IBM Corp. in Plaza Tower.
On the drawing board are plans for development of 90-acre Armstrong Ranch in Santa Ana, which will include 300 single-family homes and a cathedral for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.
Like Henry, Jeanette Segerstrom is known as a great patron of the arts, a love held dear since her days as a music student at the University of Southern California. She met her late husband during his tenure with the USC glee club, where she was the group’s piano accompanist.
Among her cultural and charitable causes are Children’s Hospital of Orange County, the University of California, Irvine, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Pacific Symphony and the Orange County Philharmonic Society.
No. 20
William Lyon
Chairman, chief executive,
William Lyon Homes
Estimated worth: $225 million
Known as the “the General,” William Lyon has been building houses since the 1950s, having a hand in the construction of more than 75,000 homes during his lengthy and sometimes turbulent real estate career. As head of William Lyon Homes, he has adapted to the swings in the economy and continues to be among the largest homebuilders in the country.
Last year, his company sold 2,666 units, making it one of the nation’s 25 biggest builders.
Based on his stake in William Lyon Homes, other companies and his car collection, the Business Journal is estimating Lyon’s worth at $225 million, though he is believed to be spreading his wealth among family members. Lyon owns a majority share of William Lyon Property Management and its 10,000 apartment units.
He is a retired Air Force major general and served as chief of the Air Force Reserve from 1975 to 1979. He attended Dallas Aviation, Air College and the University of Southern California. Lyon’s love for aviation reaches into his business dealings. He owns Air Lyon, is a part owner of Martin Aviation and previous owner with George Argyros of AirCal.
A philanthropist, Lyon has raised and given money to the Reagan Library, Orange County Performing Arts Center and USC, where an athletic complex is named for him.
The General lives in a mansion on 130 acres at Coto de Caza and may need every acre if his rare car collection continues to grow. In 1987, he shelled out $28.8 million for 82 cars from the Harrah car collection.
,Daniel D. Williams
