BUSINESS JOURNAL 20
Land Barons, Tech Titans, Heiresses Dominate OC’s Wealthiest
by Rajiv Vyas
No. 1
Donald Bren
Chairman, owner, The Irvine Company
Estimated worth: $6 billion
Many fortunes dwindled in the past year, but not that of Orange County’s richest man, Donald Bren.
We opted to keep Bren at an estimated worth of $6 billion. Sure, he’s got empty office space on his hands. And an Irvine Spectrum acre doesn’t go for what it did a year ago.
But when we came up with our estimate last year, we took stock of Bren’s holdings as owner of The Irvine Company. By our count, $6 billion was conservative after factoring in debt. After updating our tally, we believe our round estimate still sticks. While the office and industrial markets are down, they’ve been offset by strength in retail, residential and land values.
Bren actually increased his lead on his nearest rivals. Thanks to a continued slide in technology shares, Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas slipped from about an estimated third of Bren’s wealth last year to about a fifth.
Bren’s riches come from a sprawling real estate empire. He owns some 350 office and industrial buildings, 30 retail centers, 76 apartment communities, two hotels, four marinas and three golf courses.
His portfolio includes buildings in the 5,000-acre Irvine Spectrum, half of the 185-acre University Research Park, Newport Center, Jamboree Center and the Four Seasons Hotel Newport Beach. More than half of 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch is set aside for parks and other open space.
In recent years, Bren has spread his attention beyond OC, adding office, retail and apartments in Los Angeles, San Diego and Silicon Valley. In 2000, he paid $350 million for a trophy tower, Century City’s Fox Plaza.
For the most part, the moves have been solid, though the company has about a million square feet of space in Milpitas that’s leased to Cisco Systems Inc. but never has been occupied.
Bren has been a generous giver to the University of California, endowing more chairs than any other donor. He has given more than $21 million to UC Irvine alone.
After graduating from the University of Washington, Bren got his start in real estate. Early on, he formed Bren Co., a homebuilder now called California Pacific Homes. He also started Mission Viejo Co. and sold it in 1972 to Phillip Morris Cos. In 1977, Bren was part of a group that acquired a controlling stake in the Irvine Co. In 1983, he bought out most of his partners for $518 million. In 1996, he took sole ownership of the company.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 2
Henry Nicholas
Co-chairman, cofounder, chief executive
Broadcom Corp.
Estimated worth: $1.25 billion
No. 3
Henry Samueli
Co-chairman, cofounder, chief technical officer
Broadcom Corp.
Estimated worth: $1.2 billion
Technology shares just don’t go as far as they used to.
Not long ago, Broadcom founders Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli likely would have topped our listing. They repeat in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots this year, though down from last year’s tally of around $1.8 billion each. At their peak, Nicholas and Samueli were worth about $8 billion each. The two struck gold when their original 17% stakes in the chipmaker went public in a bang-up 1998 public offering.
These days, the Broadcom holdings of the two check in at $775 million each. We valued their wealth higher after looking at four years of stock sales. In 2000, both executives cashed out about $500 million in Broadcom shares.
We put Nicholas slightly ahead at $1.25 billion to try and account for what our sources call good investments in real estate and other areas. And while both are generous benefactors, Samueli has given away more money.
Broadcom’s drop in value prompted a shareholder lawsuit by a group of prominent OC businesspeople and philanthropists. Both men resigned their seats on the Orange County Performing Arts Center board, which includes some of the plantiffs. Samueli, seen as the more mild mannered of the two, was said to have led the call to fight the suit.
Samueli and Nicholas are opposites who clicked. The two first worked together at TRW Inc. designing chips for the military. They later helped start Tustin-based PairGain Technologies Inc., now part of ADC Telecommunication Inc.
Nicholas is strident, hard-driving and likes to poke fun at rivals. He was among those,along with gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon,who were listed as users of a tax shelter that’s the center of an Internal Revenue Service suit against KPMG LLP.
He likes to hold massive parties at his hilltop mansion. A former Air Force Academy student, Nicholas was Samueli’s first doctorate student at the University of California Los Angeles before turning business partner.
Samueli is revered as a visionary, an engineering genius. He’s given generously to the University of California’s Irvine and Los Angeles campuses, which renamed their engineering schools after him. He recently gave money to the Mind Institute, which seeks to boost math skills among children.
,Andrew Simons
No. 4
George Argyros
U.S. Ambassador to Spain;
Owner, Arnel & Affiliates;
Limited partner, Westar Capital LLC
Estimated worth: $1 billion
George Argyros might have lost his El Toro battle, but he gained a country.
Last year, Argyros added U.S. Ambassador to Spain to his titles. Before his December appointment, Argyros was chairman and chief executive of his Costa Mesa-based real estate company, Arnel & Affiliates. He also was limited partner in Westar Capital LLC, a venture capital firm he funded.
As ambassador, Argyros isn’t involved in the daily operations of his companies, though he retains his ownership.
We decided to leave Argyros’ estimated worth unchanged from last year, despite losses in his stock holdings such as DST Systems Inc. and First American Corp. The reason: last year’s $1 billion was conservative.
His financial-disclosure report filed before becoming ambassador put his assets as high as $2 billion. After factoring in real estate debt and stock fluctuations, we feel $1 billion still is an accurate, ballpark figure.
Argyros’ holdings include 5,400 apartments and more than 2 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space. Among them are the 280,000-square-foot Metro Pointe in Costa Mesa and the 356,000-square-foot Puente Hills Business Center in Industry.
While real estate made Argyros rich, it’s half of his wealth today. Stocks make up the rest. In his disclosure report a year ago, Argyros’ stock holdings were pegged at $1 billion to $2 billion. Among them: Rockwell Automation Inc., Pfizer Inc., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., Home Depot Inc. and Enron Corp.
These days Argyros lives in a four-bedroom suite on the second floor of the ambassador’s home next to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. His days are filled with visits by dignitaries, government officials and other guests. Three days a week, he and wife Julia (formerly Judie) learn Spanish.
The appointment topped years of GOP fundraising by Argyros, including $30 million for the Bush campaign. (In 1990, then-President Bush appointed him to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. board.) Argyros was the most prominent backer for an El Toro airport.
Born in Detroit and raised in Pasadena, Argyros graduated from Chapman University in 1959 with a major in business and economics. He also is an alumnus of Michigan State University. Argyros served as chairman of Chapman’s board of trustees from 1976 until his appointment and is the school’s leading benefactor. The business school is named after him.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 5
ANNE CATHERINE
GETTY EARHART
Heiress to J. Paul Getty
Estimated worth: $775 million
No. 5
CAROLINE GETTY
Heiress to J. Paul Getty
Estimated worth: $775 million
Anne Catherine Getty Earhart and sister Caroline Getty are intensely private heiresses of late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Two of the nation’s richest women, they are among 16 grandchildren of the autocratic billionaire.
We’re pegging both at $775 million, based on published reports and conservative estimates of how the fortunes they received have fared.
Earhart, a 49-year-old Laguna Beach resident and giver to environmental causes, surfaced in 1992 when she and husband John Earhart, who headed up the Homeland Foundation of Laguna Beach, unsuccessfully fought the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road. She sits on the California board of the Nature Conservancy.
Sister Caroline, also an ardent environmentalist, drew attention in May. That’s when she said she was the mystery donor behind $1 million given to the Nature Conservancy in support of two California parks bonds. Caroline, a Corona del Mar resident, listed her donations under “Rosebud LLC” and “Wild Rose LLC.”
It’s unlikely Caroline, called a “down-to-earth nature lover,” would have come forward had the donations not been criticized for their anonymity.
Caroline, 44, is a member of the board of the Wilderness Society and has served on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund and the National Fish and Wildlife Organization.
J. Paul Getty struck oil in 1953 and founded Getty Oil Co. in 1956. He set up the original Getty Museum art collection and endowed the J. Paul Getty Trust, which funds the Los Angeles museum. He died in 1976.
A renowned tightwad, Getty used his will to secure his four sons’ loyalty. He reportedly changed his will 21 times.
In 1985, settlement of a nine-year battle over Getty’s will resulted in Anne Catherine, Caroline and one other daughter of his late son George Franklin Getty II sharing $750 million. The entire Getty Trust was $4.1 billion when the funds were dispersed into six separate trusts.
The haggling was nasty: Gordon Peter Getty was in charge of the trust, founded with a $3.3 million bequest by J. Paul Getty’s mother, Sarah. Gordon ended the family feud by resigning as trustee. Getty had been criticized for selling the trust’s 40% share of Getty Oil Co. to Texaco in 1984. The sale went through in 1986 for $10 billion. Caroline and Anne Catherine got another $400 million each from the sale.
, Mike Mason
No. 7
Jim Jannard
Founder, chairman, chief executive
Oakley Inc.
Estimated worth: $650 million
Jim Jannard is so rich he owns his own island.
The founder of Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc. splits his time between OC and Spieden Island, Wash., a getaway he bought in 1997 for $22 million.
Jannard’s wealth has taken a wild ride in the past year. A year ago, we valued him at $825 million, based on his 60.7% stake in the maker of sunglasses and apparel. Right after we did, Oakley shares plunged. In the past year, they’ve bounced around and regained some ground. But a slide since May has Jannard’s stake back around $625 million. We’ve pegged him at $650 million to try and capture other investments, such as Spieden Island.
Since 1996, Jannard has foregone a salary while buying stock. In October, he bought 100,000 Oakley shares for about $1 million. He now owns a 61.7% stake.
Jannard,a blunt, cigar-smoking University of Southern California dropout,shows up at stockholder meetings wearing Oakley shorts, a T-shirt and athletic shoes. He has been known to don radical Oakley headpieces, such as an over-the-head contraption with fake dreds shooting out the back.
The company faced a big hiccup last year when ties with retailer Sunglass Hut International Inc. hit the rocks. The drama made for tough going on Wall Street. The retailer sharply cut back on Oakley gear after being bought by rival Luxottica Group SPA. Ties since have resumed (sales to the chain are up to last year’s levels). Oakley forged new retail routes just the same.
Jannard urges workers to push the envelope on design. At a recent shareholder meeting, he called Oakley “an idea factory” that is “dedicated to the future.”
“We dance with it,” he said. “We’re focused on delivering to the world what it has yet to dream.”
Foe Nike Inc. already is watching its rival to the south as Oakley ups its shoe offerings. (Nike founder Philip Knight and Jannard are friends turned acrimonious rivals). This fall, Oakley is set to launch two new basketball shoes. They feature a midsole system, known as “Red Code.”
Jannard started in 1975 peddling motorcycle handle grips from his station wagon, moving on to goggles and then sunglasses,still Oakley’s bread and butter.
,Jennifer Bellantonio
No. 8
JOHN TU
Cofounder, president
Kingston Technology Co.
Estimated worth: $500 million
No. 8
DAVID SUN
Cofounder, chief operating officer,
Kingston Technology Co.
Estimated worth: $500 million
Like Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, David Sun and John Tu are opposites who clicked,and made a fortune.
Tu drives a Mercedes, Sun a Chevy Suburban. Tu lives in a tony section of the Palos Verdes peninsula, Sun calls Irvine’s comparatively modest Woodbridge home. Tu’s the soft-spoken public face of Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Co. Sun’s the boisterous operations man.
The duo made their fortunes after selling 80% of Kingston to Japan’s Softbank Corp. for $1.5 billion in 1996. They bought it back for a fraction of what they were paid three years later.
We’ve pegged Sun and Tu at $500 million apiece, down from $800 million each last year. We’ve done so based on a slide in the computer memory business. Kingston, the biggest seller of memory boards, saw sales drop by half in the past year to $900 million.
Sun and Tu made national headlines in 1996 by handing out $100 million in bonuses to workers after selling the company to Softbank. To this day, they let golfers bring clubs to work and take swings at a driving range behind Kingston’s main building.
But you can’t be nice all the time. The duo fabled for generosity was forced last year to cut some benefits, halt bonuses and lay off people for the first time.
The two seldom wear ties and sit in cubicles with other workers. 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, originally from China, moved to the U.S. in 1972. Sun, who was born in Taiwan, came in 1977.
Tu plays drums, is a movie buff and likes to tell stories.
Sun, an avid golfer, once challenged Sun Microsystems Inc. chief Scott McNealy to a golf match to settle a lawsuit.
In early ’80s, Sun and Tu founded memory company Camintonn in a garage. They lugged around memory boards in the back seats of their cars. They became division vice presidents when AST Research Inc. bought Camintonn. They left to start Kingston in 1987 after losing $7 million in Camintonn proceeds at the hands of a trusted friend.
Both executives have stakes in Payton Technology Corp., a Kingston sister company that does semiconductor packaging and testing.
,Andrew Simons
No. 8
Anthony Maglica
Founder, president,
Mag Instrument Inc.
Estimated worth: $500 million
Anthony Maglica is the flashlight king whose products are popular with police officers, firefighters, mechanics and everyday folks.
His Ontario-based Mag Instrument Inc. counts 900 workers and recently started building a bigger plant that could lead to 2,400 new jobs.
The expansion is designed to drive a global push by Mag, which hopes to make exports half of sales in a few years.
Maglica, who lives in Anaheim Hills, is equally known for personal battles, including an expensive palimony fight that went on for eight years. The dispute ended in 2000 when he paid $29 million to Clarie Maglica. She lived with him for 23 years and shared his last name, though the two never wed. Clarie worked at Mag Instrument in personnel and marketing.
But the settlement didn’t end the matter. Last month, a Los Angeles court awarded $2 million to Mag in a suit charging a competitor with stealing trade secrets to make a rival line of flashlight. The competitor, Bison Sportslights in Englewood, Colo., was started by Clarie’s two sons who at one time worked at Mag.
The company’s lawyers argued Bison’s founders were “out to hurt Mag.”
In the 1970s, Maglica’s first (and official) wife received half of his assets in a bitter divorce.
By the end of the court fight with Clarie, Mag 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 in the Great Depression, Maglica was raised in his mother’s native Croatia.
He was a small child when his mother returned to Zlarin Island where she had family.
In 1950, Maglica returned to the U.S., 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 start his own machine tool business.
Maglica made precision parts for industry, aerospace and the military, earning a reputation for quality. Mag 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.
,Michael Lyster, Rajiv Vyas
No. 8
Igor Olenicoff
Founder, president,
Olen Properties Corp.
Estimated worth: $500 million
Igor Olenicoff has come a long way since his family fled Soviet Moscow and landed in America by way of Iran in 1957.
Today, his Olen Properties Corp. has amassed a real estate empire worthy of a czar, with holdings in Southern California, Las Vegas and Florida.
His portfolio includes 72 buildings in OC, spanning 4.8 million square feet of office and industrial space.
Prime holdings include Olen Point Brea, Redhill Business Park in Tustin and Spectrum Pointe in Lake Forest.
The company recently finished the 100,000-square-foot Orchard Technology Park in Lake Forest.
Last year, Olen bought One and Two Venture in the Irvine Spectrum for about $40 million.
In November, Olen paid $19 million for the Kilroy Technology Center, a business park within the Irvine Spectrum.
Olenicoff also has big plans in Colorado Springs, Colo.
In a joint venture with Newport Beach-based Capital Pacific Holdings Inc.,run by longtime friend Hadi Makarechian,Olen bought a 24,000-acre swath of entitled land for $60 million. The seller was a member of the Saudi royal family.
Most of the land is set to be sold to developers and is expected to house some 65,000 homes and 50 million square feet of commercial space.
“Olen saw this as a means to ensure its future development opportunities, as Orange County’s available land shrinks into nonexistence,” Olenicoff said.
Olen’s apartment portfolio consists of nearly 10,500 units in 33 communities, primarily in Las Vegas and South Florida.
More recently, Olenicoff entered the Phoenix market by buying a 240-unit apartment complex with plans to build more apartments in the area.
Olenicoff is regarded as a shrewd businessman who knows how to get around obstacles to get his projects done, including using shell companies to buy land.
He graduated from the University of Southern California with undergraduate degrees in business and engineering, graduate degrees in business administration and quantitative analysis.
After completing his schoolwork, Olenicoff worked for Shell Oil Co., Touche Ross and Motown Records before founding real estate syndicator Gemini Pacific. He formed Olen Properties in 1973.
Olenicoff’s parents fled Russia during World War II, in part due to family ties with Tsar Nicholas II.
They ended up in Iran, where they stayed for nearly 15 years. Olenicoff attended missionary school in Tehran, where he became fluent in English, Russian and Farsi. Son Andrei works for the company.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 12
Vincent Smith
Chairman, chief executive,
Quest Software Inc.
Estimated worth: $400 million
Like OC’s other wealthy technology guys, Vincent “Vinny” Smith has seen his riches slide in the past year.
When Quest Software Inc. went public in 1999, Smith was a multimillionaire, and even a multibillionaire, at least for a few days. Last year, his estimated wealth came in at $1.2 billion.
After a nearly 70% drop in Quest’s shares in the past year, Smith now checks in at an estimated $400 million.
The slide was enough to push Quest cofounder and President David Doyle, who owns a smaller stake in the company, off the Business Journal 20 altogether and onto our listing of “Other Centimillionaires” (see page 57).
In December, Smith sold 100,000 shares worth $2.5 million in a planned sale. He still owns 34 million shares, mostly through a family trust.
Smith still qualified for Fortune’s America’s 40 Richest Under 40 in September. The section’s heading: “Sure, they’re poorer than last year (well, most of them). But they’ve still got you beat.”
Before joining Quest, Smith made an initial fortune by helping to start Patrol Software, which BMC Software Inc. bought in 1994.
He went on to serve as BMC’s director of open systems, managing sales operations. From 1987 to 1992, Smith worked at Oracle Corp.,a Quest rival and customer,in sales management positions.
In 1997, Smith grew bored with the Colorado ski slopes and came on to replace Doyle as chief executive. In 2000, he was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Smith serves as an adviser to OpenDesign Inc., a struggling South San Francisco software maker.
Smith is the quintessential tech executive: casual, outgoing, athletic.
He’s said to regularly come to Quest’s Irvine Spectrum tower headquarters in jeans, a T-shirt and a cap. The maker of database management software counts 1,650 workers, 540 in OC.
Two years ago, in better times, Smith hosted a lavish company holiday part at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The company passed on a party last year.
,Andrew Simons
No. 12
William Gross
Chief investment officer,
managing director,
Pacific Investment Management Co.
Estimated worth: $400 million
Anybody who says you can’t make good money in bonds should talk to Bill Gross.
The chief investment officer of Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Manage-ment Co. made a fortune when German insurer Allianz AG bought the bond fund manager in 2000 for $3.3 billion.
At the time, Gross had a PIMCO stake of more than 10%, according to sources. That alone would have been worth about $300 million. After Allianz bought the company, it offered Gross a $200 million, five-year deal to stay on.
Add to that dividend payments Gross received before PIMCO was sold,he is said to have received $1 million every quarter,and we feel safe estimating his worth at $400 million. That’s up from our estimated $250 million last year.
The big difference: Gross’ PIMCO stake was higher than we thought, sources tell us.
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). Today, it is the world’s largest bond fund manager with $275 million under management.
Gross is a widely acclaimed, oft-quoted bond manager, dubbed “Baron of Bonds” by Barron’s. In 2001, he and his team won the Morningstar Fixed Income manager award, making him the only money manager to win the award twice.
He has a different investing style known as “core plus” in which he also ventures into derivatives, options and even emerging market bonds.
The result: Gross has outperformed the bond market over a 21-year period by an average of 1.25% annually.
Gross’ flagship Total Return Fund is the largest bond fund in the country with some $60 billion under management. With a swoon in stocks and a rush to bonds, it could become the largest fund of any type: the biggest stock fund, Vanguard 500, is pegged at around $67 billion. Fidelity Magellan Fund, the largest fund in 2000 with assets of almost $110 billion, has fallen below $60 billion, according to estimates.
Earlier this year, Gross sparked a media flurry with comments about GE Capital’s short-term debt, which he contended was out of whack with the finance arm’s bank lines.
Gross starts nearly every day in his Mediterranean-style home built atop a Laguna Beach cliff with a yoga session. He funded the James Hines Foundation, which contributes $100,000 annually to OC Teachers of the Year. He donated $1.5 million to the Sage Hill, a private school in Newport Beach.
,Rajiv Vyas
No. 12
Joan Irvine Smith
Heiress to James Irvine
Estimated worth: $400 million
Late last year, Joan Irvine Smith and Donald Bren found some common ground: 11,000 acres of permanent open space.
“My grandfather would be so very, very pleased,” Smith said at the December land dedication hosted by Bren.
Smith’s grandfather, James Irvine II, started The Irvine Company. Her great-grandfather, land baron James Irvine I, assembled 120,000 acres of what now is OC.
Smith herself once was a dissident on the Irvine Co. board. Her lawyers fought for eight years over how much Bren should pay Smith and her now-deceased mom, Athalie Clarke, for their shares in the company. They settled on $256 million in 1991 and have remained cordial since then.
Based on input from sources, we’re putting Smith’s estimated worth at $400 million.
In the past year, Smith has emerged as a force when it comes to development and environmental issues. She played a big role in scuttling plans for pricey new cottages at Crystal Cove State Park. She opposed a proposal to extend the Foothill (241) Toll Road through undeveloped hillsides to San Clemente, near Smith’s horse estate. She’s raised concerns about Rancho Mission Viejo Co.’s plans for some 14,000 houses on its land. And she worked with environmental groups to urge the Orange County Sanitation District to implement secondary treatment standards on waste water.
But Smith still has a little developer in her: a year ago she placed her 2 acres of blufftop land in Laguna Beach up for sale at $40 million.
Known for her philanthropic endeavors, Smith has given millions to environmental causes such as water research and to various local charities, including the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. She spearheaded efforts to donate 1,000 acres of land to the University of California that later would become the UCI campus.
A noted horsewoman, Smith has been involved in breeding, training, showing and selling world-class horses at her farms in San Juan Capistrano and Virginia. She worked for a decade to bring the U.S. Olympic trials to San Juan Capistrano in 2000.
She has written two books on California history and is working on another, “Islands in Time, South Orange County, The Irvine Ranch and Crystal Cove State Park.”
Gov. Gray Davis, who Smith has supported, declared March 20, 2002, as Joan Irvine Smith Day for her contributions to the arts and historical preservation.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 15
Steve Johnson
Founding partner, chief executive,
Sage Hill Partners;
cofounder, Johnson-Grace Co.
Estimated worth: $350 million
AOL Time Warner Inc. may not be the greatest of associations these days, but it’s where Steve Johnson’s wealth hails from.
Johnson hit it big after he and a partner sold Johnson-Grace Co. to America Online Inc. in 1996 for $70 million in AOL stock. In the next few years, his AOL shares catapulted some 5,000%.
This year, we’re estimating Johnson’s wealth at $350 million, down from $400 million last year, based on the slide in AOL Time Warner’s stock. Last year’s figure was derived with some input from Johnson, who didn’t respond to our inquiry this year.
This year’s figure is our best guess and assumes he has sold some of his AOL stock. In published reports, Johnson has said he owns AT & T; Corp. shares as well.
Johnson stayed on as an AOL vice president until mid-1999. That’s when he left to head and fund venture capital firm Sage Hill Partners of Cambridge, Mass. He’s also a limited partner at Waltham, Mass.-based Greylock Venture Capital.
These days Johnson splits his time between the coasts. He owns a house in Newport Beach, but spends a lot of time in Massachusetts with his family.
Johnson’s ties here are plentiful. He’s a director of Irvine-based go2 Systems Inc. He served as a director of Western Digital Corp.’s Keen Personal Media unit, which the disk drive maker has pulled the plug on. In recent years, Johnson gave more than $1 million to Newport Beach’s Sage Hill School.
He also sits on the board of Cabin John, Md.-based The Wondir Foundation, a nonprofit group developing an advanced Internet search engine. The group is headed by former AOL colleague Matt Koll.
Johnson holds a U.S. patent, issued in 1999, for the image compression technology currently used in AOL’s service. Three years ago, he had looked and passed at another Internet venture, called Amazilla.com, with colleagues from Johnson-Grace.
Johnson started Johnson-Grace with partner Christopher Grace with $75,000 in seed money in 1992. The two had planned on a public offering the company, but found the AOL deal more lucrative.
,Andrew Simons
No. 16
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 was bought by Waste Management Inc. in 1998.
At one point, Shirvanian’s stake in Waste Management registered as high as $500 million. We’re estimating his wealth at about $275 million.
Shirvanian has been quiet since selling his business. He served for a while as a director of Atlanta-based holding company SATX Inc. but resigned in February. The company filed for bankruptcy in March.
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 accidentally enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Shirvanian served 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 Shirvanian 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 sale to 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 astute. In 1996, he 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. 17
William Lyon
Chairman, chief executive,
William Lyon Homes
Estimated worth: $225 million
William Lyon amassed a fortune, nearly lost it, and rebuilt an even bigger one.
Lyon, a homebuilding giant for decades, saw his empire reduced to rubble by the late-1980s downturn, with lenders taking virtually all the assets of his William Lyon Co. as he doggedly worked through the disaster without resorting to bankruptcy.
It took years to recover. In 1993, Lyon started William Lyon Homes, selling two houses that year. By 1998, the company had sales of $68 million and cleared a profit of $6.3 million.
Today, William Lyon Homes is booming along with the hot housing market. The company topped $468 million in 2001 revenue and was OC’s fourth-largest builder last year with 467 homes. It also builds elsewhere in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Based on Lyon’s stake in the homebuilder, and his majority share of William Lyon Property Management and its 10,000 apartment units, we’re estimating his worth at $225 million. He’s also got a vintage car collection worth in the neighborhood of $60 million. Sources say Lyon is spreading his wealth among family members.
Since the 1950s, Lyon has had a hand in building more than 75,000 homes and helped create the Southern California suburban landscape.
A retired Air Force major general, Lyon served as Chief of the Air Force Reserve from 1975 to 1979. He attended Dallas Aviation and 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.
Cars also are a passion. In 1987, he shelled out $28.8 million for 82 cars from the Harrah automobile collection. Today, Lyon has 52 antiques, including 10 Duesenbergs (out of only 480 made). His 1931 Duesenberg J Speedster took best of show at 2000 Newport Beach Concours d’Elegance.
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.
,Daniel D. Williams
No. 18
William Foley
Chairman, chief executive,
Fidelity National Financial Inc.;
chairman, CKE Restaurants Inc.
Estimated worth: $200 million
Bill Foley is among the few on our listing who saw his estimated wealth increase in the past year, thanks largely to his surging title insurance business, Fidelity National Financial Inc.
Last year, we had Foley on our second list at less than $200 million. This year, we’re putting him at $200 million based on his Fidelity stake and investments in CKE Restaurants Inc., American National Financial Inc. and other companies. And then there’s his Santa Barbara-area property: an oceanfront home and two wineries and two vineyards.
Foley was helped by a surge in Fidelity’s stock price in the past year. As of last week, the shares were up about 30% from where they were a year earlier. At their June peak, they were up nearly 50%. As of last week, Foley’s 6% Fidelity stake was worth roughly $150 million.
Fidelity has benefited from the booming housing and refinancing markets, though some observers think the party is winding down. Fidelity catapulted to the top tier of title insurers with its buy of Chicago Title two years ago.
Besides Fidelity, Foley’s estimated worth also rose because of the gains in shares of CKE, operator of Carl’s Jr. CKE’s stock has surged this year on turnaround progress, though its pulled back in recent weeks.
Foley also is well paid for what he does. His 2001 salary and bonuses were $3.8 million, four times what he took home in 2000.
Foley’s wineries and vineyards produce 20,000 cases of wines a year. And he’s expanding his wine plantations. Foley has 24 acres of vineyards and has planted another 250 acres. In all, he owns 425 acres of vineyards in Santa Ynez and wants to produce 60,000 cases of wine annually.
Foley lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and four children. We include him on our listing because much of his wealth comes from OC, though he’s increasingly shifting his business empire to Santa Barbara.
,Rajiv Vyas
No. 18
Duane Roberts
Chairman, chief executive, Entrepreneurial Corporate Group
Estimated worth: $200 million
His hometown friends call him “Mr. Riverside.” But Duane Roberts has made a big splash in Orange County.
The self-billed inventor of the frozen burrito paid nearly $10 million in 1998 for a blufftop estate in Laguna.
The Inland Empire figures large in Roberts’ background,and in much of his business interests. Roberts’ family ties to Riverside go back more than 50 years.
In 1950, his father, Harry Roberts, founded Butcher Boy Food Products Inc., a meat company that was the main supplier of hamburger patties to the original McDonald’s in San Bernardino.
Duane Roberts quit college to work at the company and at 19 formulated the first commercially made frozen burrito.
At 27, he became president and built Butcher Boy from one plant with 60 workers and $3 million in yearly sales to six plants with 1,400 workers.
By the time the family sold the business to Central Soya Inc. in 1980, Butcher Boy had an estimated $85 million in yearly sales.
Roberts stayed on as chairman of the company for about two years after the sale. The company now is part of Tyson Foods Inc.
He later went on to sell another burrito company, Fernando’s Foods, to ConAgra Foods Inc. in the late 1990s for about $35 million in ConAgra stock.
Roberts took his Mexican food fortune and branched out into real estate, as well as banking and other investments.
He was a majority shareholder in Moreno Valley-based Cal-West National Bank, which was sold in 1993 to Overland Bank of Temecula.
The bank’s successor, First Pacific National Bank, in which Roberts was a big shareholder, later was bought by Zions Bancorp.
In the early 1980s, Roberts founded DRR Investments, which later became Entrepreneurial Capital, an investment arm of Entrepreneurial Corporate Group.
Last year, Entrepreneurial Capital kicked in $2 million in funding to help start Corona del Mar-based Miramar Venture Partners, the venture firm started by Bruce Hallett and others.
Roberts’ other interests include Entrepre-neurial Hospitality Corp., which runs the Riverside Convention Center, and Entrepreneurial Foods Group LLC, which owns four British companies.
In 1992, Roberts bought the landmark 235-room Mission Inn in Riverside.
Roberts’ varied holdings make his estimated worth hard to deduce.
Based on input from sources, and factoring in debt associated with real estate, we’ve conservatively put him at about $200 million.
Roberts has been active in the Republican Party for about 20 years and has been a top contributor to GOP campaigns.
He was among 249 contributors who gave at least $100,000 in support of President Bush and other Republican candidates.
He also is involved in Olive Crest Treatment Centers, the Anaheim-based nonprofit for abused and neglected children. He started the group’s Inland Empire branch.
A few years back, he and his wife hosted a party for Olive Crest supporters at their 12,000-square-foot home.
He and his wife said they were attracted to Villa Gucci, as they call the house, because it reminds them of the French Riviera where they wed in the 1990s.
,Michael Lyster
No. 20
Robert Hoff
General partner,
Crosspoint Venture Partners
Estimated worth: $175 million
Many technology entrepreneurs saw their fortunes plunge in the past two years. Not venture capitalist Robert Hoff.
The venture capitalist ranked in our second tier list last year with wealth estimated at about $100 million. This year, we have put his wealth conservatively higher,at $175 million,after hearing from Hoff and reliable sources. By our count, Hoff is the wealthiest venture capitalist in OC.
Hoff, 50, is a general partner at Woodside-based Crosspoint Venture Partners and manages the firm’s Irvine office.
While Charles Martin (who appears on our second list on page 56) put OC on the venture map, Hoff took OC to a different level with his highly calculated, aggressive bets.
He has invested in more than 65 startups in his career.
In 2001, Forbes magazine ranked Crosspoint No. 1 in the country in terms of overall distributed returns to its limited partners. Investors who had placed $1 with Crosspoint in 1996 got back $29 by 2001. This was after fees and profit sharing by general partners such as Hoff. Venture capitalist firms such as Crosspoint normally charge 2% fees for managing money and take 20% of the profits.
Crosspoint manages about $1 billion. In 2000, the firm returned $1 billion it had raised from investors citing lack of investment opportunities.
Some of Hoff’s hits include Innovent Systems (acquired by Broadcom Corp.), IPivot, (bought by Intel Corp.) and PairGain Technologies (bought by ADC Telecom-munications Inc.).
Misses include now defunct Internet consultant marchFIRST.
After making his fortune, Hoff is semi-retired. He always schedules his calendar around family events.
He is a team administrator of his daughter’s soccer team. He’s said to support coworkers and has encouraged employees, including administrative staff, to participate in the Crosspoint fund.
In late 2000, he and wife Ann gave $15,000 to VenturePAC, a political action committee that lobbies on behalf of companies that venture capitalists support. Hoff is one of the biggest investors in Corona del Mar-based Miramar Venture Partners, a new venture firm started by former lawyer Bruce Hallett.
, Rajiv Vyas
