$3 Billion Lighter –
Stock Losses Take a Bite Out of OC’s Wealthiest
by Michael Lyster, Editor
It’s been a tough year to be rich.
Don’t worry, OC’s wealthiest still are rich. They’re just not as rich as last year.
The 20 people on our second wealthiest listing on page 56 count a collective estimated worth of $16.3 billion. That’s down from $19.2 billion for the 20 folks on our first listing a year ago.
Blame it on Wall Street.
Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli lost $1.2 billion between them in the past year as shares of the Irvine chipmaker slid. The two,worth as much as $8 billion each in 2000,come in at about $1.2 billion now.
The technology trouncing also hit Vinny Smith of Quest Software Inc.
By our reckoning, his estimated worth dropped from $1.2 billion a year ago to $400 million.
Quest cofounder David Doyle, who owns less of the Irvine software maker, fell from the main listing to our “Other Centimillionaires” roster on page 57.
Allen Chao, who runs Corona’s Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. and lives in OC, saw the same fate.
A profit warning last year pushed the drug maker’s stock off a cliff, cutting Chao’s estimated wealth by two-thirds. He’s now on our second listing.
We also lowered our estimates for David Sun and John Tu of Kingston Technology Co. While their company isn’t publicly traded, its valuation surely has slumped with the memory products business. We’ve pegged them at $500 million each, down from $800 million last year.
Real Estate Held
OC’s land barons were unchanged from last year.
The Irvine Company’s Donald Bren tops our list again at an estimated $6 billion. Sure, he’s got some empty office space. But retail and residential land has held strong. We felt no need to change last year’s estimate. Ditto for Igor Olenicoff and George Argyros, despite his stock losses.
Two others from last year’s listing came off, but for different reasons.
Jeanette Segerstrom, Henry Segerstrom’s sister-in-law, died last fall. She ranked No. 17 last year at an estimated $250 million. Our assumption is that her estate split among her three daughters and one son, with none qualifying this year.
Henry Segerstrom, who’s said to have a smaller stake of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons than Jeanette had, makes our second listing.
The other departure: James Slavik, president of Newport Beach real estate developer Mark IV Capital Inc.
Last year we listed Slavik at $350 million because of his controlling ownership of stock in W.W. Grainger Inc., where he’s a director. But Slavik contends he’s one of many beneficiaries and his own worth is too low for either of our listings.
The list includes four newcomers: a richer William Foley and new discoveries heiress Caroline Getty, Mexican food mogul and investor Duane Roberts and venture capitalist Robert Hoff.
The Methodology
To come up with our list, we’ve spent weeks looking into individual holdings, company assets, public records and press clippings, and talked with trusted sources.
Even so, our listing comes with caveats. Like the Forbes 400 and similar listings, our numbers are conservative, ballpark figures. We’ve done our best to catalog assets, factor in debt, the cost of exercising stock options and other factors. But only the people on our listing know their true value.
Nor is our listing all-inclusive. We’ve done our best to track down who we believe are OC’s wealthiest people. But we are sure to have missed people.
We look forward to comments on those we may have missed.
Our definition of “worth” includes stocks, real estate and other assets held by individuals after debt, stock exercising costs and other factors.
In all but rare cases,such as Slavik’s,it includes shares or other assets held in family trusts or family-owned corporations controlled by an individual.
Our listings are limited to individuals who live here or those who derive most of their wealth from OC.
You’ll notice some prominent names missing from our listings: Knott, Sakioka, Kawamura and Hoiles. We opted not to include families. Based on our research, we determined that the wealth of these families was too dispersed for any member to make our listings.
One exception: the O’Neill-Moiso clan of Rancho Mission Viejo LLC.
Our math puts the value of the family’s land holdings in the hundred of millions of dollars, and one member likely could qualify for our listing. We can’t figure out which one.
Another name not on our list, for the second year in a row, is Donald Koll.
Again we talked with sources who say the longtime OC developer should be on our list. Others say he shouldn’t. Still others said they just don’t know what Koll is worth.
It’s the same for Hadi Makarechian of Capital Pacific Holdings Inc.
His holdings in the publicly traded real estate developer don’t earn him a listing. But some suggest his family wealth would. We got a mixture of opinion,and empty responses,on that one, too.
