Founder, Chairman
RSI Equity Partners
THE HISTORY: Simon—born into the Great Depression in Los Angeles to a Russian mother and an English cabinetmaking father—turned his father’s business, Perma-Bilt, into the nation’s largest manufacturer of bathroom medicine cabinets. In 1987, Simon sold Perma-Bilt and started RSI Home, which became the largest manufacturer of cultured marble countertops, bathroom vanities, and medicine cabinets in the world.
RECENT SALES: RSI Home sold in 2017 for $1.1 billion to Winchester, Va.-based American Woodmark Corp., about half of it in debt and half in cash and stock. American Woodmark’s stock is flat year-over-year. In 2018, RSI Communities sold to William Lyon Homes for $460 million.
THE BOOK: “Business can be a battlefield, and I have decades of stories and the mental scar tissue to prove it,” he wrote in recently published memoir, “Tell Me Why I Can’t.”
PHILANTHROPY: The Simon Scholars Program is involved in about 20 local high schools, with 1,300 scholarships and counting, valued at more than $40 million. The Simon STEM Scholarship Program, started in 2015, provides a full scholarship to Chapman University to pursue a STEM-area degree. Chapman received a $9 million commitment from the Simon Foundation during its annual Chapman Celebrates gala in 2019. In June, he and his wife, Sandi, announced a $5 million gift to Chapman to transform a historic building near campus into a 33,000-square-foot building for the school’s performing arts program. Will be called the Sandi Simon Center for Dance; opening next year.
• NET WORTH: $1.4 billion
• LAST YEAR: $1.3 billion
• RESIDENCE: Newport Beach
• SOURCE OF WEALTH: manufacturing
