#31 Toshiaki Ogasawara
Chairman, Nifco Inc., Nifsan Pty. Ltd. Japan Times Simmons Co.
Estimated wealth: $300 million
Ogasawara—who in recent months has been finishing up One Pelican Hill in Newport Coast, which he picked up at auction for about $20 million last year—is commonly referred to as a billionaire in Asia and Australia.
We’re not sure he’s got that much, and last year we introduced him to the list at the $250 million minimum requirement. We’ve taken him up to $300 million this year based on the generally strong year for stocks and other asset classes and signs of a rebound for high-end real estate in Australia. A continued upturn Down Under would bode well for the $1 billion Emerald Lakes masterplanned development in the works by Ogasawara’s Nifsan Pty. Ltd. on the Gold Coast, north of Sydney. The place is expected to have 1,800 apartments when completed and already features “an 18-hole championship golf course, 13 kilometers of walking and bike tracks, buggy access to the golf course and club house, a lake, a vibrant retail and commercial precinct as well as some of the Gold Coast’s finest restaurants.”
Real estate is a secondary career.
Ogasawara has been a top executive with Nifco Inc., a top maker of plastic parts and components in Japan, serving as president from its founding in 1967 until becoming chairman in 2001. He took the title of honorary chairman in 2008. The company had about $1.5 billion in revenue and $86 million in earnings last year.
He’s also chairman of Simmons Co. in Japan, which has the Far Eastern franchise rights for mattress marketer Simmons USA, with operations in 18 countries in Asia. He holds the same title with the Japan Times Ltd., publisher of the oldest English-language newspaper there. He acquired the publication in 1983 and ran it for 20 years. A daughter now is in charge.
Ogasawara doesn’t live in OC full time, but One Pelican is his second home here, so we’re giving him local status.
The octogenarian is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University and has honorary doctorates from the University of South Florida and Florida State.
He’s survived throat and prostate cancer and is a big supporter of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and Cedars Sinai in L.A. A profile in the Hoag Foundation magazine
said he spends a lot of time “shuttling between Tokyo and the U.S., scheduling his visits to California to enable various medical appointments and procedures at his preferred hospital—Hoag.”
—Jerry Sullivan
# 31 Joan Irvine Smith
Heiress, philanthropist
Estimated wealth: $300 million
Irvine Smith is the great-granddaughter of James Irvine and a major donor to education, the arts and environmental causes.
She made the news earlier this year when she sold the San Juan Capistrano farm near Ortega Highway that hosted her world-class horse-breeding operation for more than 25 years.
The Oaks, once on the market for $20 million, was sold in April for an undisclosed purchase price. A venture of Newport Beach-based Isles Ranch Partners LLC and Minneapolis-based TPG Credit Management LP helped fund the purchase of The Oaks by Davidson Communities, a Del Mar-based homebuilder.
Davidson has proposed building 22 homes
on 10,000-square-foot lots on The Oaks,
with half the land as open space, according to reports.
We’ve taken our estimate of Smith up by $25 million this year, with a gain from The Oaks and the generally strong stock market in mind. Smith’s wealth tracks back to her great-grandfather, who struck it rich during the Gold Rush of 1849. James Irvine and three partners bought 120,000 acres of land, which made up about a quarter of Orange County at that time.
James Irvine II, Smith’s grandfather, incorporated the land as Irvine Land Co. in the 1890s.
Donald Bren and others acquired control of what later became known as Irvine Company in 1977. Bren, who ranks No. 1 on this year’s wealthiest list, became sole owner in 1996.
Bren paid Smith and her mother, Athalie Clarke, $256 million for their Irvine Co. shares in 1991.
Smith and Bren are cordial. They share a passion for the environment and preserving parts of the Irvine Ranch as open space.
She also was a champion of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, which opened in 2009. She donated $1 million to help establish the school.
Smith has been a UC Irvine ally for many years—the university’s website noted that the Irvine Co. donated 1,000 acres of land to the University of California Board of Regents that became the campus. She’s also donated time and financial support over the decades to help advance the campus.
Her other passions include politics.
The ardent Democrat has given to Hillary Clinton, Loretta Sanchez, the late Ted Kennedy and others.
—Vita Reed
#31 William Wang
Founder, chief executive, Vizio Inc.
Estimated wealth: $300 million
Wang is gearing up for the college football season―and it has little to do with the prospects of University of Southern California, his alma mater.
Irvine-based Vizio Inc. is in the last year of its four-year sponsorships of the Rose Bowl, which includes naming rights to the title game in January.
The 2014 Vizio BCS National Championship Game will be watched by millions across the globe, and the company has already begun capitalizing on the attention with a big marketing campaign heavy in social media and product placement at VIZIOFanZone.com.
Vizio, which built its name selling quality flat TVs for less than its big-name rivals, now is eyeing the PC market, but with higher-end models, in a bid to compete with Apple, Toshiba and other brands.
“We felt there was a lack of good, quality PCs at an equivalent basis of Apple at an affordable price,” Wang told the Business Journal. “We all learned a lot from this experience and launch.”
The company also is learning the ropes of the smartphone market in China, where it recently debuted a low-cost Android-powered model. Wang and Vizio are keeping the project under wraps.
“It’s not something we’re actively talking about—it’s really a test product,” Wang said. “Phones are a big market, a lot bigger than TVs.”
Vizio has made similar big gains in smaller segments, such as sound bars and other TV accessories.
It projects to sell some 1 million speaker bars this year, according to Wang, solidifying the top position in a market segment it shook up three years ago with a debut product priced under $200.
We estimated Wang’s worth at $300 million, up from $275 million last year, based on the strong gains in the stock market the past 12 months, which offset a maturing market for TVs and the investments made in PCs.
That’s our conservative guess since Wang’s exact ownership stake, Vizio’s profits and other variables aren’t known. It is believed that Taiwan-based AmTran Technology, one of the company’s primary manufacturers, owns about 23% of Vizio.
—Chris Casacchia
#31 Mark Wetterau
Chief executive, chairman, Golden State Foods Corp.
Cofounder, Wetterau Associates LLC
Estimated wealth: $300 million
Continued business growth at Irvine-based Golden State Foods Corp. is a key factor behind the Business Journal’s upward estimate of Mark Wetterau’s net worth.
Golden State Foods—where Wetterau is chief executive, chairman and majority owner—sells meat, liquid products, sauces and other products to longtime customer McDonald’s Corp. Its other customers include Starbucks, Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell.
Golden State Foods had $5.8 billion in sales last year, up about 7% from 2011. It services more than 25,000 fast-food restaurants and stores from its 37 facilities in some 50 countries.
Recent expansion efforts included the acquisition of a majority stake in Groenz Group Ltd. in New Zealand and the buy of Gateway Distribution Inc. in Lebanon, Ill. Golden State Foods also broke ground on a distribution facility in McCook, Ill.
The company is just part of the holdings of Wetterau Associates, a family company Wetterau runs with his brother, Conrad. The duo founded the St. Louis-based firm in the early 1990s with the objective of acquiring and managing food distribution and manufacturing companies.
Wetterau Associates’ companies include Consolidated Beverage in Worcester, Mass., and Quality Beverage LP in Taunton, Mass., which Conrad Wetterau heads as chief executive. Quality Beverage is the largest independently owned Anheuser-Busch distributor in the state.
Wetterau Associates also owns Lucia’s Pizza and wealth management firm Argos Partners, both in St. Louis.
The Wetterau brothers and their business units reflect strong ties to St. Louis, where their great-grandfather started a food-distribution and manufacturing business in the late 1800s after coming to the U.S. from Germany.
Mark Wetterau began his career at what had become Wetterau Inc. after graduating from Westminster College in 1980 with a business degree.
He moved up the ranks at Wetterau Inc. and was elected to the board of directors in 1987. He also became chairman and chief executive of Shop ‘n Save Warehouse Foods Inc., a retail chain Wetterau Inc. acquired a few years prior.
He soon became president of Wetterau Inc., and two years later he and Conrad sold Wetterau Inc. and its business units, including Shop ‘n Save, to Super Valu Stores Inc. for $1.1 billion. The brothers formed Wetterau Associates shortly after.
Mark Wetterau has served on the boards of several nonprofit organizations in the U.S. He also established the GSF Foundation for kids in 2002 as part of Golden State Foods. The nonprofit has raised more than $23 million since its inception and has donated to more than 500 charities focused on serving children.
He lives in Laguna Niguel with wife, Virginia. They have three children. He enjoys skiing, boating and golfing.
—Jane Yu
#36 Kobe Bryant
Los Angeles Lakers
Estimated wealth: $250 million
Other estimates making the rounds on Bryant are a shade under our $250 million minimum for this year’s OC’s Wealthiest list.
We’re giving the Newport Coast resident the benefit of the doubt based on several factors.
He’s heading into the final season of a three-year deal worth nearly $90 million—about half bigger than Lebron James, by the way. That pact followed more than $200 million in past salary.
Then there are the intangibles. It seems as though Bryant’s time in Europe as a child—his father, Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, spent time playing hoops in an Italian league—made him comfortable in the global economy. Forbes recently estimated his endorsement deals have grown steadily and now top $30 million a year, with much of that coming from Europe and China.
Another intangible: a no-nonsense approach that appears to include Bryant’s outlook on personal finances.
Yes, he obviously spends some serious dough on wardrobe—and he’s been known to splurge on jewelry for his wife, Vanessa, on occasion.
Bryant also has a serious reputation for knowing how to manage assets. He recently sued to stop his parents from auctioning off memorabilia from various milestones in his career. He eventually struck a deal that allowed the sale of about 10% of the stuff, which fetched about $430,000.
So put another $3.9 million toward the son’s net worth, minus the cost of a few hours of legal fees.
Measure that sort of attention to financial detail against a career that includes five championship rings, and the benefit of the doubt gets easier to give to Bryant when it comes to money.
—Jerry Sullivan
#36 Sheldon Razin
Founder, chairman, Quality Systems Inc.
Estimated wealth: $250 million
Razin will soon see changes at Quality Systems, the Irvine-based healthcare software maker that he started with $2,000 nearly 40 years ago.
Quality recently said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its board’s transaction committee plans to recommend it retain an investment bank or management consultant to look into various options, including a potential sale of the company.
The maker of practice management and medical record software recently struck a deal with New York-based activist investor Clinton Group Inc. that also included adding three Clinton-backed director candidates.
Razin did shed a longtime thorn in his side at the end of May, though, when dissident shareholder and director Ahmed Hussein resigned from Quality’s board.
He owns 10.2 million shares of Quality, a 17% stake with a value that’s worth about $227.4 million, up from $163 million a year ago.
Quality’s shares have been on an upswing since a tough 2012 that knocked him off the Wealthiest list. We’ve put him back this year based on the rebound of Quality shares in particular—they’re up about 33% from a year ago—and the generally strong run for stocks and other asset classes over the past 12 months.
Quality is rooted in a management consulting business Razin started in the early 1970s.
It began selling to dentists, then added doctors and went public in 1982, raising $11 million.
The Boston native holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Before starting Quality, he held various technical and managerial positions with former OC aerospace company Rockwell International Corp.
Razin is a past winner of the Business Journal’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award and delivered the keynote address for the annual luncheon earlier this year. He’s given to MIT, the Chabad Jewish Center of Laguna Beach and the Alzheimer’s Association.
Razin is a married father of two and grandfather of five. He’s a baseball fan who follows the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, as well as his hometown Boston Red Sox.
—Vita Reed
#36 Edward O. Thorp
Founder, owner, Edward O. Thorp & Associates
Estimated wealth: $250 million
Thorp’s skill for quantitative analysis has taken him from the ivory tower to the casino floor to the heights of the hedge fund game—and he’s rubbed shoulders with the likes of Warren Buffett and written books that have influenced fellow OC’s Wealthiest list member Bill Gross along the way.
It’s not easy getting a grip on the net worth of a fellow who’s been the smartest guy in the room—classroom, poker room or boardroom—for more than 50 years. But Thorp kindly left some clues in a recent appearance on Business Journal Executive Editor Rick Reiff’s talk show on PBS SoCal. The King of the Quants didn’t dispute that he’s “the better part of a billionaire” and went on to put himself among the top “1/100th of 1%” of U.S. households in terms of net worth—a group that’s generally believed to start at the $100 million mark.
Thorp’s been a top performer for decades—long enough to back up an estimate that he meets the minimum $250 million mark for our list.
We also readily concede that we could be well below the mark for a guy who has sold more than a million copies of “Beat the Dealer,” taught everywhere from MIT to UCLA, and speaks as plainly and clearly as anyone on topics ranging from quantitative analysis to political culture.
—Jerry Sullivan
