Orange County’s richest have reached new highs in terms of combined wealth and billionaires.
A total of 39 individuals combine for an estimated net worth of nearly $49 billion, according to the Business Journal’s annual list of OC’s Wealthiest, the centerpiece of this week’s issue (Special Report starts on page 41, list starts on page 54).
It’s the highest total yet reported for our rankings and comes on a strong run for various asset classes over the past 12 months, particularly stocks and real estate. More than half of the entries on the list are estimated to have grown their fortunes by more than 10% over the past year.
Most of the rest saw more moderate gains, with a couple of flat performances the worst cases for this year’s crop.
This year’s list includes 15 billionaires—the most ever.
The combined wealth of the group—roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Uruguay—is up more than 14% from our list last year, which included 36 individuals and 13 billionaires.
The new entries to the ranks of the billionaires include the owners of two of OC’s best-known brands, In-n-Out Burgers Inc. and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
We’ve redone our math and nearly doubled our estimate for In-n-Out’s Lynsi Torres to $1 billion. The new calculation follows national media reports listing her as the youngest known female billionaire in the U.S., along with new information on the chain’s operations.
She’s one of six women on our listing of OC’s Wealthiest and one of three female billionaires, along with Anne Catherine Getty Earhart and Caroline Getty, who are both ranked at No. 12.
The addition of Angels Baseball LP owner Arturo Moreno is a reflection of the growing value of the local baseball franchise and its related media contracts in his fortune.
Our listings are limited to individuals who live here or derive most of their wealth from OC.
We previously calculated that the bulk of Moreno’s wealth came from business concerns outside the area.
It takes an estimated worth of $250 million to crack this week’s list, the same threshold as last year.
Moreno isn’t the only new sports-related name on the list.
Los Angeles Laker guard Kobe Bryant, a Newport Coast resident, squeezes onto this week’s edition thanks to his earnings on and off the basketball court over the years.
Bryant is the first professional athlete to make the list, which is now in its 13th year.
Our initial list, in 2001, had 20 entries with a combined $19 billion of wealth.
This edition of the list includes its fair share of tech entrepreneurs, real estate owners, and other executives familiar to readers of our paper.
Irvine Company owner and Chairman Donald Bren is again at the top of our list, with an estimated fortune of $14 billion. That’s more than the combined wealth of the next five people on the list.
Bren’s entry drives the average fortune on the list to about $1.28 billion. It would fall to about $940 million without him in the mix.
The 7.7% gain given to Bren’s entry this year—an addition of $1 billion to his fortune—is largely in line with increased values for real estate prices across the country. Commercial real estate prices are up about 8% from a year ago, according to CoStar Group Inc.’s Commercial Repeat Sale Index.
Bren’s fortune has doubled over the past decade, according to the Business Journal’s estimates. He remains the wealthiest person the county has ever seen—and the richest real estate developer in the country by a wide margin.
The only other people in OC whose fortunes are believed to have ever topped $10 billion are Broadcom Corp. cofounders Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas, who each hit the mark at the height of the tech boom in the last 1990s.
Samueli’s wealth is now estimated at $2.2 billion, good for the No. 6 spot on the list, while Nicholas’ $1.5 billion fortune puts him at No. 9.
Methodology
We’ve spent weeks looking into individual holdings, company assets, public records and press clippings, and talking with trusted sources as we’ve researched this week’s list.
Our numbers are generally conservative, ballpark figures. We’ve sought to take assets into acount, factor in debt, determine the cost of exercising stock options and consider other factors.
Some 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.
The list remains a work in progress.
We’ve done our best to track down who we believe are OC’s wealthiest people. But we are sure to have missed some. We look forward to comments on those we may have overlooked.
