The Southern California billionaires’ club got a little less exclusive over the past year.
There now are 52 individuals in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties who likely can call themselves billionaires, according to the latest rankings in each of the Business Journals for those regions.
That’s an increase of 11 from a year ago.
New members to the region’s billion-dollar club in Orange County this year are heiresses Caroline Getty and Anne Catherine Getty Earhart, and Paul Merage, chairman of Newport Beach’s MIG Capital LLC and co-creator of Hot Pockets and other food products (see OC’s Wealthiest profiles, starting on page 34).
The new additions give Orange County 12 billionaires, the most ever here by the Business Journal’s estimate.
In Los Angeles, former eBay president Jeffrey Skoll ($2.5 billion), Public Storage Co. heir Tamara Hughes Gustavson ($2.2 billion) and Occidental Petroleum chairman Ray Irani ($1.1 billion) are among those who joined the ranks.
Fortunes Increase
All told, L.A.’s 50 wealthiest residents saw their estimated fortunes increase nearly 16% over the past 12 months, to a combined $108 billion.
Orange County’s richest also combined for a healthy 4.6% gain throughout the past 12 months (see related story, page 1).
It’s the first time since the downturn that average wealth for the 50 richest Angelenos—a combination of Hollywood moguls, real estate owners, techies, finance execs and heirs to family fortunes—broke the $2 billion mark, according to the May rankings from our sister publication, the Los Angeles Business Journal.
The list of Orange County’s wealthiest includes 33 entries who average about $1.3 billion.
OC also is home to the richest in the entire region: Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren, whose wealth we’ve estimated at $12.5 billion this year.
L.A. Leads
Los Angeles leads Southern California in total number of billionaires, with the bank accounts for 39 of the top 50 wealthiest there cracking the 10-figure mark.
The lowest total for an individual on the most recent L.A. list was producer and real estate developer Stephen Bing, who is estimated to have a $700 million fortune.
If Bing lived in OC, he’d be the 14th richest resident. He’d be No. 4 in San Diego.
San Diego has only two billionaires this year: Qualcomm Inc. founder Irwin Jacobs ($1.5 billion) and Charles Brandes ($1 billion), founder of Brandes Investment Partners in Carmel Valley, according to the San Diego Business Journal’s Rich Register, which comes out in December.
It would only take a $70 million fortune to crack San Diego’s 20-person rich list.
It takes $275 million to crack Orange County’s top list.
L.A. and OC each count one billionaire as their own: Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Co. cofounder John Tu. The L.A. Business Journal pegs the wealth of Tu, who has a home in Rolling Hills, at $2.9 billion. We estimate his fortune—and that of Kingston cofounder David Sun—to be $2.75 billion.
The 12 OC billionaires on this week’s list saw a cumulative 3.8% increase to their wealth last year, to $34 billion.
Improved valuations for commercial real estate properties helped boost the wealth of several locals on this year’s list, including Igor Olenicoff, who moved up $300 million to $2.5 billion and George Argyros, whose real estate and stock also increased
some $300 million in the past year, to $1.3 billion.
Biggest Gain, Drop
The biggest gain among Southern California’s rich during the past year was in L.A., where media mogul Sumner Redstone saw a nearly $1.3 billion boost in wealth, to $4.2 billion, thanks to improvements in his vast Viacom and CBS stock holdings.
The biggest drop among anyone on the three lists was seen for Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger, whose net worth fell some 40% to $1.1 billion, according to the L.A. Business Journal.
The 87-year-old Munger transferred nearly half of his Berkshire stock to a family trust following the death of his wife earlier this year.
An Uptick
Another big reason for the increased wealth totals for OC’s billionaires this year is for the uptick given to Irvine Co. Chairman Bren, who saw his estimated wealth increase by $500 million to $12.5 billion last year, according to Business Journal estimates.
Bren, a Newport Beach resident, is Southern California’s richest resident, and remains the country’s wealthiest real estate owner by a wide margin—Forbes magazine lists Northern California’s John Sobrato ($3.3 billion) as the second-richest real estate mogul in the country.
Forbes also estimates Bren to be the fourth wealthiest resident in all of California, behind Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison ($27 billion) and Google Inc.’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page ($15 billion each).
Bren’s wealth far exceeds the No. 1 entry in Los Angeles, where Patrick Soon-Shiong tops the list with an estimated worth of $7.8 billion.
The biotech executive saw a big payday last year after his cancer drug developer Abraxis BioScience Inc. was bought by New Jersey drugmaker Celgene Corp. for more than $2.9 billion.
