It was a good year for the ultra-wealthy here.
Orange County’s 33 wealthiest people—including a record 12 billionaires—combine for an estimated worth of $42.6 billion, according to the Business Journal’s annual list in this week’s issue.
The total is up 4.6% from a year ago.
Donald Bren easily tops our list again at $12.5 billion. The chairman of Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Company also remains Southern California’s wealthiest resident by a wide margin (see related story, page 10).
Bren is among 20 people on our list who we estimate to have seen upticks to their wealth last year.
The list starts on page 42, with profiles of individual entries beginning on page 34.
Our definition of worth includes stocks, real estate and other assets held by individuals after debt, stock exercising costs and other factors.
In some cases, the higher estimates seen on this year’s list factor in improved stock prices—for specific companies owned by individuals and for the market as a whole—over the past 12 months.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up about 17% over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 index has gained about the same over the same period.
Other members of the list—including Bren, Olen Properties Corp.’s Igor Olenicoff, and Arnel & Affiliates owner George Argyros—likely reaped the benefits of improving valuations, if not improving fundamentals, of their substantial commercial real estate holdings over the past year.
In a few other cases, we upped estimates for some after coming up with what we believe are better assessments of their wealth.
All told, the changes resulted in three new billionaires on this year’s list: Caroline Getty and sister Anne Catherine Getty Earhart, granddaughters of late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, as well as Paul Merage, the Hot Pockets co-creator and University of California, Irvine’s business school benefactor.
Upward
We estimated $50 million increases in the fortunes of the two sisters, while opting to boost Merage by $150 million, under the assumption that our prior estimates for him were low and his investments did well in a strong year for stocks and other asset classes.
At 12 members, OC’s billionaires’ club is now the largest seen on our list to date. The combined wealth of the 12 represents about 80% of the total wealth on this year’s list.
$275M Minimum
The cutoff to make this year’s list is $275 million, up $25 million from a year ago.
A high-profile divorce was responsible for the one new entry as well as the largest individual decline on this year’s list.
We added Stacey Nicholas, former wife of Broadcom Corp. cofounder Henry Nicholas, to our list with an estimated $300 million fortune.
Henry Nicholas dropped one spot on this year’s list to No. 8. We estimate his fortune to be worth $1.6 billion, while his Broadcom cofounder and Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli is estimated to be worth $2.3 billion, good for the No. 6 spot.
To come up with our list, we’ve spent weeks looking into individual holdings, company assets, public records and press clippings as well as talking to trusted sources.
In some cases the 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.
Like the Forbes 400 and similar listings, our numbers are conservative estimates. We’ve sought to catalog assets, factor in debt, determine the cost of exercising stock options and account for other factors.
Our listings are limited to individuals who live here or to those—such as Oakley Inc. founder Jim Jannard—who derive most of their wealth from OC.
Jannard, who spends most of his time in Washington state and Nevada, remains in the No. 2 spot on our list with an estimated $3.1 billion fortune, a $100 million increase from a year ago.
11th Edition
This is the 11th edition of OC’s Wealthiest. Our initial list, in 2001, had 20 entries with a combined $19 billion of wealth. As always, the list remains a work in progress.
We’ve done our best to track down who we believe are the county’s wealthiest people. But we are sure to have missed some. We look forward to comments on those we may have overlooked, undervalued or overvalued.
