There’s some extra math to do on our annual list of Orange County’s wealthiest people, the centerpiece of this week’s special issue.
The list has 35 entries with a combined net worth of nearly $42.6 billion, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Luxembourg.
This year’s total is effectively flat compared to last year’s list, which included 33 entries.
The break-even measurement came as the list was researched and compiled in recent weeks. A strong run for the stock market near presstime means many members likely are already up from these estimates.
Several entries from 2011 fell off this year’s list, and five new members have been added.
Conservative estimates on the wealth of the five new members—along with one longstanding entry who recently gave away about $1.6 billion—kept this year’s list from showing a gain.
This year’s entries would have combined for an increase of nearly 3%—even before the late run-up on stocks—from a year ago without the big giveaway (See profiles of members of the list, starting on page 31; the list itself, starting on page 44; related stories throughout issue).
The list includes 13 billionaires this year—the most ever.
The newest entrant to the billionaire’s club: Vinny Smith, whose Quest Software Inc. in Aliso Viejo has agreed to a $2.4 billion sale to Dell Inc., a deal slated to close this quarter.
Smith owns about 34% of Quest’s outstanding shares, which put his stake in the sale at about $800 million. Our estimates on his other holdings put his estimated total wealth at the billion-dollar mark.
There were clear gains at the top, with seven members showing increases to their estimated fortunes, including four of the top 10.
Rising Values
Rising real estate values, particularly in the red-hot apartment market, helped boost the wealth of several of the entries, including Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren, who once again tops the list. We estimate Bren’s worth at $13 billion this year, up by $500 million from 2011.
A good case could be made that our latest valuation of Bren understates gains seen in Irvine Co.’s sprawling portfolio, which has added thousands of new apartments and several new high-end office buildings over the past year.
Commercial real estate prices are up more than 6% from a year ago, according to CoStar Group Inc.’s Commercial Repeat Sale Index.
Five people saw declines to their wealth in this week’s list, including David Sun and John Tu, co-owners of Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Co., the largest maker of memory products for computers and consumer electronics.
A big drop in sales last year for the privately held company resulted in our revised valuations of $2.6 billion each for Sun and Tu. They retained the No. 3 spot on this week’s list despite the cut in our estimates on their net worth from a year ago in our estimates.
Jannard’s Giveaway
The list also takes into account a burst of philanthropy by Jim Jannard, who started Irvine-based Red Digital Cinema Camera after making a fortune with Oakley Inc., which he founded and sold to Luxottica Group SPA in Italy for $2.1 billion in 2007, when he had 64% stake.
Jannard told the Business Journal he has given nearly half of his money away to charity over the last year. That leaves him with an estimated $1.6 billion and drops him to No. 7 from the second spot last year.
Jannard indicated that his donations have been made on the condition of anonymity.
Newcomers to the list include car dealership owner David Wilson, whose wealth is estimated at $425 million, placing him at the No. 19 spot—the highest new entry on the list.
Wilson’s Toyota of Orange, Newport Lexus and other area auto dealerships combined for nearly $1.8 billion in sales last year, leading us to believe we’ve overlooked his wealth in past years.
He’s one of two auto dealers on the list, along with longtime entry Fletcher “Ted” Jones Jr., whose wealth also is estimated at $425 million.
Other new entries include telecom executive Gary Jabara; newspaper publisher, manufacturer and real estate owner Toshiaki Ogasawara; Golden State Food Chairman Mark Wetterau; and Lido Island real estate owner John Curci.
Jabara, owner of Newport Beach-based Mobilitie LLC, sold off a chunk of the company’s cell phone towers earlier this year in a $1.1 billion deal that vaulted him onto the list.
It’s likely that Ogasawara, Wetterau and Curci each should have been added to the list several years ago.
Three individuals, whose combined wealth was estimated at just over $1 billion last year, dropped off this year’s edition of OC’s Wealthiest.
Sheldon Razin, founder and significant stockholder of Quality Systems Inc., saw a steep drop in the value of the Irvine-based medical software maker over the past month. The plummet led us to drop our estimate on Razin’s net worth from last year’s estimate of $400 million to below the threshold for this year’s list.
Quality Systems last week alleged that prohibited trading by a dissident shareholder prompted the stock decline, which saw the company’s valuation drop from nearly $2 billion to less than $1 billion. Razin has a 17% stake in the company.
Uncertainty about the operations of two real estate developers—Peter Cooper and Michael Harrah—led us to drop them from this year’s list (see related story, page 3).
Details on Cooper, who is said to split his time between Newport Beach and his homeland of New Zealand, have been hard to come by the past few years.
Harrah remains Santa Ana’s largest commercial property owner. But ongoing delays for construction of his proposed One Broadway skyscraper, along with sales of other area buildings to help finance the project, prompted us to keep him off this year’s list.
A few other shifts give this year’s list and special issue a new look. We’ve skipped the compilation of “centimillionaires” from this year’s special issue in favor of efforts to uncover more entries qualified for the main list and to present them with depth and graphic appeal. We also lowered the threshold for the list to $250 million from $275 million last year.
We’ve spent weeks looking into individual holdings, company assets, public records and press clippings as well as talking to trusted sources.
In some cases the individuals on our list cooperated with us to provide guidance for our estimates, while others declined. A few have told us they would prefer not to be on the list at all.
Conservative Estimates
Our numbers are conservative estimates. We’ve sought to catalog assets, factor in debt, determine the cost of exercising stock options and account for other factors.
Our listings are limited to individuals who live here or derive most of their wealth from OC. The latter category of OC wealthy include Jannard, who spends most of his time in Washington state and Nevada.
This is the 12th edition of OC’s Wealthiest. Our initial list, in 2001, had 20 entries with a combined $19 billion of wealth.
The list remains a work in progress.
We’ve done our best to track down who we believe are the county’s wealthiest people. But we are sure to have missed some. We look forward to comments on those we may have overlooked, undervalued or overvalued.
