#1 – Donald Bren
Owner, chairman, Irvine Company
estimated worth: $12.5 billion
A recovering real estate market led us to adjust our estimate for the county’s largest landlord and land owner.
Donald Bren, chairman of Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, comes in at $12.5 billion this year, up from $12 billion the prior two years.
The change isn’t to suggest that the local real estate market is back to pre-crash levels—it isn’t. Home sales are a mixed bag across the county, and commercial buildings still count a fair share of empty space.
But several factors that we use to gauge the wealth of local real estate owners point to an estimated increase in valuation for many of Bren’s holdings.
They include: Rising sales prices for select office buildings and other commercial properties; a renewed Irvine Co. development push; recent office and apartment acquisitions; and an upswing in the apartment market.
Institutional investors have bid up prices for stable, well-located buildings in Southern California in the past year, with the industrial and apartment markets in particular seeing near-peak prices for some high-end properties.
Home Sales
And homes sales in Irvine likely have kept the value of Irvine Co.’s developable land at a stable price, which wasn’t a given during the worst years of the housing downturn.
This year’s estimate marks a subtle change in our valuation of Bren.
During the downturn, we didn’t adjust Bren as much as other real estate owners, given the size and quality of the company’s holdings and its minimal debt, which presumably brought less volatility in value.
Irvine Co.’s real estate holdings include office space, shopping centers, apartments, hotels and marinas in Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Chicago.
The company owns about 95 million square feet of rentable commercial real estate. The portfolio is made up of 484 office properties, 116 apartment communities with some 44,000 units, 41 shopping centers, three hotels, three golf courses and five marinas.
In OC, the company’s holdings include large parts of the 5,000-acre Irvine Spectrum, Newport Center, half of Irvine’s 185-acre University Research Park and all of Fashion Island, Jamboree Center, MacArthur Court and the Resort at Pelican Hill.
Irvine Co., which declined to comment on Bren’s wealth or on specifics related to the company’s holdings, added to its holdings in the past year or so.
Office acquisitions include: a Newport Center office property currently occupied by bond fund manager Pacific Investment Management Co. that likely traded hands for around $125 million; Costa Mesa’s Pacific Arts Plaza, which sold for about $213 million; and Chicago’s 49-story Hyatt Center office building, bought for about $625 million.
Chicago Buy
The Chicago deal is the first outside California for the company.
Platinum Triangle-area apartments acquired in October mark another new market. The Orange property reportedly traded hands for more than $200 million.
Irvine Co. also has been among the few companies developing.
It has sold nearly 1,500 homes in Irvine since early 2010—most through the company’s Irvine Pacific LP homebuilding division—making it the most active home seller in the county.
The company also is estimated to own 27,000 acres of land, about half of which probably is developable. The land could accommodate 20,000 lots for homes and nearly 6,500 apartments, after factoring in streets, parks and other uses.
Irvine Co. traditionally has sold lots to builders that develop homes according to specifications set by the company.
Land sold to builders typically sells for about $3 million per net or buildable acre, according to sources familiar with the company’s land sales.
The company has taken the lead on homebuilding itself in the past year, with Irvine Pacific building homes in Irvine’s Stonegate and Laguna Altura neighborhoods.
Irvine Co. also has several thousand apartment homes going up or in the works in Irvine.
In Newport Center, the company has started making way for what’s likely to become Newport Beach’s most valuable office space, a building for the new world headquarters of Pimco.
Sources peg Irvine Co.’s debt level at about 40% or less of the company’s entire portfolio, compared to 60% or more for some real estate owners or specific buildings.
Cash Flow
The company is said to generate sizable annual cash flow, even during tougher times. That money, along with debt, has been used in the past four years to develop or purchase an additional 6 million square feet of apartments, office and retail space and the Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Coast.
It also has been used to reinvest in the company’s shopping centers, office buildings and apartments. Among recent investments, the company spent close to $100 million on upgrades to Fashion Island, opening a Nordstrom with a Whole Foods in the works.
Irvine Co. has an “A” credit rating and stable outlook from Fitch Ratings Inc., confirming its relatively low debt.
Our new estimate for Bren tops a $12 billion valuation by Forbes Magazine in its March list of global billionaires.
The magazine ranked Bren as the wealthiest U.S. real estate owner and the 64th richest person in the world.
We haven’t always agreed with Forbes.
Bren, the county’s largest land owner, landlord and most prominent businessman, is the wealthiest person seen here. He tops Broadcom Corp. cofounders Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas at their 2000 peak of $10 billion each.
Bren got his start as a homebuilder in 1958. In 1977, he was part of a group that acquired control of Irvine Co., the successor to the massive ranch bought by James Irvine in 1864.
Bren bought out many of his partners for $518 million in 1983. He became Irvine Co.’s sole owner in 1996.
Bren’s set aside 50,000-plus acres of land—more than half of the 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch—as parks, trails and open space in perpetuity. They’re designated as natural landmarks.
Immense wealth has brought about sizable giving by Bren. Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine ranked him one of the nation’s most generous philanthropists, estimating his lifetime giving at more than $1.3 billion.
More than $265 million of that giving has been for education. He’s directed more than $70 million to the University of California, Irvine.
Bren also has given to University of California, Santa Barbara, creating the graduate level Bren School of Science and Management. He has provided the initial funding for 3 graduate level schools within the University of California system and has endowed more UC distinguished faculty chairs than any other individual donor, earning him the rare University of California Presidential Medal in 2004.
California Institute of Technology and Chapman University are other significant education beneficiaries.
In 2006, Bren’s personal foundation pledged $20 million to Irvine school district for arts, music and science programs.
Since 2006, one of his many pledges includes some $10 million to Think Together, a Santa Ana nonprofit that offers after-school programs.
—Mark Mueller
#2 – James Jannard
Founder, chief executive, Red Digital Cinema Camera Co.; Founder, Oakley Inc.
estimated worth: $3.1 billion
Jim Jannard has managed to turn what was once a hobby into a potential game-changer for the film industry.
While it’s difficult to value Lake Forest-based Red Digital Cinema Camera Co., the company is presumed to have continued its rapid growth since Jannard started it in 2005.
Red Digital makes digital cameras that have been used to film award-winning motion pictures and popular television shows. Among its credits are movies such as The Social Network, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Amazing Spider-Man.
TV shows filmed with a Red Digital camera include Southland and Pretty Little Liars.
Those strides led us to take Jannard’s estimate up $100 million this year.
Earlier this year, Red Digital subleased 110,000 square feet of space in the Irvine Spectrum to ac-commodate the company’s growth from sales of the Red One camera and new products.
Last month, the Epic-M camera model became available for sale after delays brought on when a software bug was uncovered. Another version of the Epic, the Epic-X, is set for full production in early September.
Last year Jannard bought the former Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood and renamed it Red Studios Hollywood.
Plans for an 80-acre Red Digital campus in Las Vegas have been scaled down from an original vision of a camera factory, sound studio and housing for Jannard, actors and visitors.
As an inventor, a portion of Jannard’s wealth comes from patents. Many of those go back to Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc., which he founded in 1975 as a maker of handlebar grips for motorcycles.
Oakley now makes and sells sunglasses, goggles, prescription frames, clothes, shoes and accessories.
Jannard is still turning out innovations for that industry. His most recent patent was awarded last month for an audio system for sunglasses or other eyewear.
A good chunk of Jannard’s estimated wealth comes from a 64% stake he had in Oakley, which he sold to Italy’s Luxottica Group SPA along with the rest of the company for $2.1 billion in 2007.
Jannard is said to have stock in Luxottica, though it’s unclear how much of the company he owns.
Oakley continues to be a sales force for Luxottica, with revenue up 11% for the three months through March.
Luxottica’s U.S. shares are up about 30% in the past year.
Adding to Jannard’s wealth are investments in Treasury bonds made before the downturn and investments in stocks made after the market bottomed out.
Jannard has developed a cult-like following among film buffs for advancements made with Red Digital cameras and at Oakley, where he holds the chief mad scientist and visionary title.
He calls Nevada and Spieden Island, Wash., home.
—Kari Hamanaka
#3 – David Sun
Cofounder, chief operating officer, Kingston Technology Co.
estimated worth: $2.75 billion
#3 – John Tu
Cofounder, president, Kingston Technology Co.
estimated worth: $2.75 billion
2011 is shaping up to be a much different year at Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co. than its banner 2010 campaign.
Kingston, the biggest maker of memory products for computers and consumer electronics, has a tempered outlook for 2011 amid supply uncertainties in Japan, rising component costs and slowing demand for its memory products for computers and consumer electronics.
Kingston has said it expects a “solid” year with some new products but is “extremely unlikely to meet the same sort of revenue” as 2010, which saw record sales of $6.5 billion, up nearly 60% from a year earlier.
The surge made Kingston the county’s largest privately held company, surpassing the Newport Beach-based parent of Pacific Life Insurance Co.
This year an oversupply of memory products has dragged prices down by about half.
Prices and profits on Kingston’s products move in tandem with memory chip prices.
Sun and Tu are estimated to own the vast majority of the company. They also have other investments.
We’ve pegged them at $2.75 billion each this year, the same as a year ago. That’s largely because the period measured here caught about half of last year’s banner results and this year’s tougher market.
Our estimate is based in part on Kingston’s revenue projection, market share, falling memory prices and comparisons to two publicly traded rivals.
Kingston closed out 2010 claiming half the market for the most common memory used in computers (see Serial Entrepreneurs, page 1).
Kingston’s shares of sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM)—chips mounted on circuit boards that boost computer performance—rose from 39% in 2009 to 50% last year, according to market tracker DRAMeXchange.
Total DRAM sales were $9.5 billion, putting Kingston’s stake of the market at $4.8 billion.
Kingston’s position in this key segment is expected to grow in the coming years.
Shares of Fremont-based Smart Modular Technologies Inc., which makes memory modules, are up more than 50% in the last 12 months but trade in the single digits, so wide shifts are common. Milpitas-based SanDisk Corp., which makes flash memory products for consumer electronics, are slightly down in the same period.
We presume a premium for Kingston, given its role as the largest maker of memory products.
Kingston buys memory chips from Asian, European and American suppliers and assembles them onto circuit boards used for short-term data storage in computers. The company also builds chips into memory cards and flash drives used in cameras, cell phones and other consumer electronics.
Revenue in 2011 is expected to see slower growth or even decline across the industry, continuing to slide through 2013 as chip prices fall amid lower demand.
Kingston hopes new products will help offset a rise in production costs that’s expected because of the increases on copper and various other materials.
Earlier this year the company debuted a stick memory module that plugs into computers and boosts memory speed and improves overall performance. It also came out with a line of secure flash drives for corporate customers.
The effects of new products on Kingston’s annual sales remain to be seen.
Fortune came to Sun and Tu after they built Kingston and then sold 80% to Japan’s Softbank Corp. for $1.5 billion in 1996. Three years later, they bought it back at a steep discount.
Both men are on their second fortunes, having founded memory products maker Camintonn in the 1980s and selling it to former Irvine computer maker AST Research Inc.
They left AST to start Kingston after losing millions in Camintonn proceeds in the 1987 stock market crash.
Sun and Tu are known for their generosity. They made headlines in the 1990s when they handed out $100 million in bonuses to workers after selling their company to Softbank.
Kingston has put its name behind fundraising events by local nonprofits, including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which has a chapter in Irvine. Kingston’s British operations give to Vision Charity, which raises funds for blind and dyslectic children.
Sun has given to Taiwanese charities, the Presbyterian Church and education causes.
Tu and wife Mary have given $250,000 to KOCE-TV. He’s also backed projects to help homeless children in Brazil.
Sun and Tu also are music devotees and keep local musicians in gigs with their company orchestra.
Tu jams with his own band, JT & California Dreamin’, which plays benefits.
Tu also has given to stem cell research, inspired in part by friend and AST cofounder Tom Yuen, a dialysis patient.
In Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” a book that was made into a movie, Tu is the businessman benefactor for a group of inner-city high school kids.
Tu, originally from China, moved to the U.S. in 1972. He once worked as a cook in his uncle’s Chinese restaurant and as an apprentice welder while living in Germany as a young man.
Sun, who was born in Taiwan, came to the U.S. in 1977.
—Chris Casacchia
#5 – Igor Olenicoff
Owner, founder, president, Olen Properties Corp.
estimated worth: $2.5 billion
New information and a modest upturn in commercial real estate pricing has given Newport Beach developer and real estate owner Igor Olenicoff a $300-million boost in his estimated wealth on this year’s list.
We’ve estimated Ol-enicoff at $2.5 billion this year. It’s the highest estimate yet for the longtime mainstay on our list of wealthiest residents.
Getting a better sense of Olenicoff’s company, Newport Beach-based Olen Properties Corp., is the primary reason for this year’s uptick.
Based on input from a source familiar with Olenicoff, we now estimate his real estate portfolio to be in excess of $4 billion.
Factoring in a debt level that’s said to be well below many other property owners, improving market conditions that justify higher valuations for many of his key real estate holdings and other assets, we believe $2.5 billion reflects a more accurate picture of Olenicoff’s holdings.
Along with boosting this year’s figure, we’ve also revised our prior year’s estimate for Olenicoff to $2.2 billion.
Our figure for Olenicoff remains a conservative one, along with most of the rest of our estimates.
The update puts the Business Journal on the same page as Forbes, which gave Olenicoff a similar bump in estimated wealth in its March ranking of the world’s billionaires.
Forbes estimates Olenicoff, who has homes here and in Florida, to be the eighth-richest real estate businessman in America.
Olen Properties Corp. owns more than 7 million square feet of office and industrial space, much of it in Orange County. The value of those buildings likely has increased over the past year, based on sales prices seen here of late.
Olen also has more than 10,000 apartments, primarily in Las Vegas and Florida, with another 500 or so in OC and Arizona. Many of those apartments have been debt-free for years. Apartments across the country have seen an uptick in pricing the past year, although perhaps not as much in Olen’s core markets as in California.
Other Olen assets include marinas, restaurants, airport hangars and a golf course. All told, the square footage of Olen’s total commercial real estate portfolio likely runs close to 20 million square feet, including apartments.
Olenicoff also reportedly owns close to 1,400 acres of land in Temecula, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.
Olenicoff made his fortune after his family fled Soviet Moscow and landed in America, by way of Iran, in 1957. He started Olen in 1973.
Nationally prominent holdings include Chicago’s One South Dearborn tower, bought in 2006 for about $360 million.
Locally, offices Olen owns include Century Centre, a pair of 13-story office towers on Irvine’s Main Street, and Brea’s Olen Pointe office and apartment campus.
Other sources of wealth for Olenicoff include stocks, loans he’s made and cash holdings, according to sources.
In 2008, he settled a long-running tax dispute with federal authorities regarding the size of his holdings and money kept in overseas accounts. He paid about $50 million in penalties.
Olenicoff moved more than $300 million from overseas accounts to the U.S. as part of the settlement.
He’s suing his former UBS AG bankers, and others, for $500 million, saying they gave him bad advice and turned him in to the feds to protect themselves. Olenicoff said he’d donate any money won for that case, which is still ongoing, to charity. Court records indicate at least one settlement with a defendant in that case is in the works.
—Mark Mueller
#6 – Henry Samueli
Cofounder, chief technical officer, Broadcom Corp.
estimated worth: $2.3 billion
Henry Samueli is back in the public eye after regaining a seat on the board of directors at Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp.
Samueli, the company’s cofounder and former chairman, rejoined the board in May in a move that brought the engineering visionary full circle after a lengthy legal vindication.
The appointment ended a three-year absence from the board as he publicly distanced himself from the company during a legal battle over backdated stock options.
In late 2009 U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney threw out his plea deal on a criminal charge of lying to investigators, citing prosecutor misconduct and a lack of evidence. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil case against him was also dropped.
The move marked the beginning of the end of a long saga for Samueli and Broadcom cofounder and former chief executive Henry Nicholas, No. 8 on this year’s OC’s Wealthiest.
In March Broadcom outlined the terms of a preliminary settlement to resolve a shareholder lawsuit dealing with stock options backdating in which Samueli and Nicholas agreed to pay the company more than $50 million combined.
Samueli is set to see some $24 million in unexercised stock options canceled as part of the settlement.
We estimate Samueli’s wealth at $2.3 billion, even with last year. That’s based largely on Broadcom’s stock slipping about 1% in the last 12 months. A rally of the shares in the last two weeks brought the stock up from being down more than 15% over the last year.
Samueli’s 28 million Broadcom shares account for about half of his wealth by our estimate.
He’s sold $1.2 billion in shares since the company went public in 1998, including about $70 million worth in the past year or so but remains a dominant shareholder.
Samueli is known as a mentor to Broadcom’s engineering groups and does high-level strategy and product development for chips that go into computers, cell phones and consumer electronics.
Samueli’s name has recently graced the sports pages more than the business section thanks to other interests. His Anaheim Ducks hockey team had a successful regular season on the ice, drawing renewed support from fans and reaching the National Hockey League playoffs.
The Ducks generate an estimated $25 million in ticket sales per season to go with revenue from TV and radio rights, merchandise and other sources. They are generally considered to break even or be slightly profitable during good years.
A lifelong hockey fan, Samueli bought the team from Walt Disney Co. for $75 million in 2005. He also owns the company that operates Honda Center, the Ducks’ home ice.
Including concerts and other events, Honda Center is estimated to do about $50 million a year in ticket and concession sales.
Landing a basketball team has long been one of Samueli’s goals since entering the sports business, and he came close to achieving it earlier this year when the Sacramento Kings weighed a move to Orange County.
He even offered to increase a personal loan to the team from $50 million to $75 million for the move, take a minority stake in the franchise and pump as much as $70 million into stadium improvements.
In the end, Kings co-owners Joe and Gavin Maloof decided to stay in Sacramento for another year in hopes of landing a new stadium there, a major stumbling block without a clear resolution. Samueli will be at the center of discussions next year if the Kings can’t secure a new home in Sacramento.
In 2006, Samueli and wife Susan joined Bert Ellis in buying KDOC-TV for about $150 million from Golden Orange Broadcasting. The station broadcasts Ducks games that aren’t scheduled by cable channel Fox Sports West.
The station also has tweaked its programming recently in an effort to capture more market share. In late 2009, it added ESPN Plus’ syndication package of Southeastern Conference football and men’s basketball games. It added coverage of Big 12 Conference men’s basketball during the 2010-11 season.
Samueli and his wife have given away more than $250 million in the past decade and are among the county’s top philanthropists.
Among their causes are the University of California’s Irvine and Los Angeles campuses, both of which named their engineering schools after Samueli.
In all, the Samuelis have given more than $35 million to UCLA, where Samueli earned three degrees. Last year he was awarded the UCLA medal, the university’s highest honor.
At Chapman University, a library is named for Samueli’s parents, Polish Jewish immigrants who survived Nazi Europe.
Wife Susan is a big supporter of alternative medicine. UC Irvine’s Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine is named for her.
The Samuelis also give to numerous nonprofits through their foundation, which focuses on healthcare, youth charities and Jewish causes.
—Chris Casacchia
#7 – William Gross
Cofounder, co-chief investment officer, managing director, Pacific Investment Management Co.
estimated worth: $2.2 billion
We estimate a gain of $200 million this year for Gross based on his Hall-of-Fame credentials as an investor and the strong performance of stocks and gains in other asset classes during the past 12 months.
He’s best known as the “king of bonds” at Pacific Investment Management Co., which oversees about $1.2 trillion in investments for pension funds, insurers, corporations and others from its Newport Beach headquarters.
Gross has been shifting strategies lately. He recently sold all U.S. bonds from his $234 billion Pimco Total Return fund, the world’s largest mutual fund. He’s been steering Pimco toward stocks, and his status is such that many observers take that as an indication that the bond rally of the past 30 years has run its course.
Gross says that’s not necessarily so, although he warns about that the federal government’s U.S. deficit spending and the potential for inflation, which drags down the value of government debt and require issuers to pay bigger returns to investors.
“It is a question of valuation,” Gross said on Bloomberg Television earlier this year. “It is not a question of departing treasuries based on credit fears.”
He’s also continued a shift toward equities.
Pimco started its first stock fund, the Pathfinder, in April and quickly got to about $2 billion in investments. A second stock fund, with a focus on emerging markets, is in the works.
Pimco is opening a brokerage in New York as it takes over the selling of its mutual funds from German parent Allianz SE.
The changes have led to a second-straight year of sizable employment growth, including new hires and about 170 brought on from Allianz. Pimco’s overall count grew by about 300 last year and is expected to do about the same this year, reaching 1,800 employees total. About 850 of Pimco’s employees are here, with most at its headquarters in Newport Center.
Pimco also is getting ready for a new 380,000-square-foot headquarters to be built by Newport Beach-based developer and landlord Irvine Company. The building at 650 Newport Center Drive is going up a few blocks from Pimco’s existing headquarters, which it leases from Irvine Co.
Construction of the 20-story tower is expected to finish by mid-2013.
Anyway you figure the shifts, additions and new address, Gross remains in the upper-echelon of the wealthy here.
Gross’ compensation and investments aren’t public. This year’s estimate follows an upward revision a year ago.
Last year Pimco saw a big milestone when it surpassed $1 trillion in assets under management for the first time.
Gross is Pimco’s co-chief investment officer, guiding investments with Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian.
Part of Gross’ wealth comes from the 2000 sale of Pimco to Germany’s Allianz SE for $4.7 billion. Gross is believed to have received $400 million in the sale.
On top of that, Gross reportedly has been paid a sports-star-type salary plus bonuses. Before Pimco’s sale, he’s believed to have collected big dividends based on the performance of his funds.
Humble and almost shy, Gross got his first taste of money management playing blackjack, turning $200 into $10,000 in four months. He also ran a Kentucky Derby pool while at North Carolina’s Duke University.
After earning an MBA at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gross became a securities analyst at Newport Beach-based Pacific Life Insurance Co.
In 1971, Gross helped start Pimco within Pacific Life. The bond fund manager set off on its own in 1994 as Pimco Advisors.
An avid stamp collector, Gross has spent an estimated $100 million on his hobby. He’s said to own every stamp produced in the U.S. from 1847 to 1869.
He sold $1.5 million worth of rare European stamps to benefit Doctors Without Borders, the latest in a series of sales to benefit charities. Last year, Gross gave $8 million to the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.
With his wife Sue, his other giving includes $23.5 million to Duke University for scholarships, $20 million to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian for its women’s pavilion and $10 million to the University of California, Irvine, for stem cell research.
Two years ago the couple paid $23 million for an 11,000-square-foot Georgian-style mansion on a bayfront lot on Newport Beach’s secluded Harbor Island.
They tore down the home, thought about and decided against building a new one, and a few months ago listed the now-empty lot for sale at $26.5 million.
—Jerry Sullivan
#8 – Henry Nicholas
Cofounder, Broadcom Corp.
estimated worth: $1.6 billion
Henry Nicholas has spent the last few years repairing an image tarnished by a lengthy legal battle over accusations of stock options backdating and a reputation for hard partying.
He’s spared no cost in clearing his name in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion, enlisting an all-star cast of attorneys, public relations experts and consultants.
Those expenses and a pending divorce settlement led to a big drop in our estimate on Nicholas, which is down from $2 billion last year.
In March he closed another chapter in his life when he and Broadcom Corp. cofounder Henry Samueli agreed to pay the company more than $50 million to resolve a shareholder lawsuit dealing with stock options backdating. Nicholas is set to pay nearly $27 million under the agreement.
The Daily Journal, a legal newspaper in Los Angeles, pegged Broadcom’s legal costs at more than $100 million, citing a 2010 motion to dismiss the lawsuit by one of the company’s lawyers.
Last year a federal judge threw out the government’s case, citing a lack of evidence and prosecutor misconduct. Separate drug charges against Nicholas also were dismissed.
Nicholas had pleaded not guilty in both matters.
The cases could have dragged on for years and had the potential to put a much bigger dent in Nicholas’ wealth.
Nicholas has tried to keep details of his divorce settlement sealed in the courts, but a records request by the L.A. Times shed light on $1 billion in property shared by the couple.
We estimate the divorce settlement, legal fees and other hits trimmed about $400 million from his wealth.
Like Broadcom cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Henry Samueli, Nicholas has been steadily selling shares of Broadcom, which makes chips that go into computers, cell phones and consumer electronics.
Nicholas is co-trustee of the Nicholas Broadcom Trust, along with his ex-wife. The trust holds about 26 million Broadcom shares with a recent market value of about $960 million. He’s sold an estimated $1.2 billion in shares since the company went public in 1998.
Nicholas continues his activism on behalf of crime victims’ rights and philanthropy that aims to boost education.
Victims’ rights struck a personal chord with his sister’s murder decades ago. He was a driving force in efforts to stop Proposition 66, a statewide referendum that aimed to weaken the three-strikes law, a proposal many victims’ right advocates saw as watering it down.
He’s also big on philanthropy that aims to boost education.
His Nicholas Academic Centers in Santa Ana graduated 60 seniors this year who all plan to attend college in the fall. The centers offer after-school tutoring, computers and mentoring programs. Nicholas is talking with Governor Jerry Brown about ways to take the concept behind the school statewide.
He has given to the engineering and computer science programs at the University of California, Irvine, where he established the Nicholas Prize research grants.
Nicholas also gives to Pacific Symphony, Habitat for Humanity, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the Oakland Military Institute, among others.
He’s made some media-friendly appearances recently at charitable events, social galas and education-related events.
—Chris Casacchia
#9 – George Argyros
Owner, chairman, chief executive, Arnel & Affiliates; limited partner, Westar Capital LLC
estimated worth: $1.3 billion
George Argyros remains one of OC’s richest real estate owners, although he’s likely made as much, if not more, money from his non-real estate investments in the past year.
We’ve estimated Ar-gyros at $1.3 billion this year, up from $1 billion a year ago.
That increase is a reflection of big gains for one of Argyros’ key stock holdings as well as a generally improving market in pricing for commercial real estate, especially for apartments.
Despite the increase, our estimate falls short from that of Forbes, which put Argyros at $1.7 billion on the magazine’s March list of global billionaires. That figure’s up from Forbes’ prior estimate of $1.5 billion for Argyros.
Argyros can thank the performance of DST Systems Inc. for much of this year’s jump. He’s the largest individual investor in the Kansas City, Mo.-based software company, with nearly 10 million shares, good for a market value of about $530 million at recent check.
DST’s shares are up about 30% in the past 12 months, and the company has been getting buyout offers. Argyros has said he thinks the company’s stock should be valued by as much as 30% higher, a level last seen in 2007.
DST is an early investment of Costa Mesa’s Westar Capital LLC, Argyros’ investment firm.
On the real estate front, Argyros owns Costa Mesa-based Arnel & Affiliates, a development and investment company he started in 1968.
Arnel has close to 5,500 apartments and some 2 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space in and around Orange County.
Among its holdings are the 280,000-square-foot Metro Pointe shopping center in Costa Mesa and the 356,000-square-foot Puente Hills Business Center in City of Industry.
Conservatively factoring in debt, the Business Journal last year estimated Argyros’ wealth from real estate to be worth close to $600 million.
This year, we’ve bumped that estimate up to the $700 million range. In particular, the value of his apartment holdings, which we previously estimated to have fallen 25% or more during the recession, are moving up again, due to lower cap rates and higher rents. Other properties are likely up 10% or more from a year ago.
Argyros also counts a small stake in Santa Ana’s First American Financial Corp., where he’s a director, and recent First American spinoff CoreLogic Inc., which is headquartered in Santa Ana.
Argyros also owns shares in Costa Mesa-based Pacific Mercantile Bancorp, where he’s a director of the bank holding company.
Born in Detroit and raised in Pasadena, Argyros graduated from Chapman University in 1959 with a major in business and economics.
He also attended Michigan State University.
Argyros served as chairman of Chapman’s board of trustees from 1976 until his 2001 appointment by President George W. Bush as ambassador to Spain.
He rejoined Chapman as a trustee upon his return three years later. Argyros is one of the school’s biggest benefactors. He and wife Julia also give large donations to several causes.
—Mark Mueller
#10 – Caroline Getty, heiress to J. Paul Getty
Governing Council officer, The Wilderness Society
estimated worth: $1 billion
#10 – Anne Catherine Getty Earhart, heiress to J. Paul Getty
Founder, president, Marisla Foundation
estimated worth: $1 billion
Caroline Getty and sister Anne Catherine Getty Earhart keep a low profile while funding environmental and Democratic causes with their oil inheritance.
They’re granddaughters of late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.
The sisters are two of the nation’s richest women and are among 16 grandchildren of the autocratic billionaire.
We estimate their worth at $1 billion. That’s based on a longstanding conservative analysis that continues with a 10% gain this year, which we view as likely with the strong stock market and increases in values on other asset classes.
The sisters’ wealth comes from J. Paul Getty, who struck oil in 1953 and founded Getty Oil Co. in 1956. He died in 1976.
After a nine-year battle over Getty’s will, a 1985 settlement gave Earhart, Caroline Getty and one other daughter of his late son George Franklin Getty II $750 million each.
The family sold part of Getty Oil to what’s now Chevron Corp. for $10 billion in 1986. Caroline Getty and Earhart got an additional $400 million each from the sale.
They continue to give away money.
Earhart, 58, lives in Corona del Mar. She’s founder of Laguna Beach’s Marisla Foundation, which unsuccessfully fought the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road in the 1990s.
In 2008, Earhart gave richly to Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Al Franken.
In 2010, Earhart supported the successful fight against Proposition 23, which sought to suspend global warming laws. Earhart also supported the successful “Yes on Proposition 22,” which prohibits the state from redirecting funds from local governments.
Marisla Foundation had about $62 million in assets in 2009. The foundation has helped fund the preservation of coral reefs on the island of Menjangan off the coast of Bali, Indonesia.
Getty, 53, also is an environmental activist. She’s a member of the governing council of The Wilderness Society and has served on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
—Sherri Cruz
#10 – Paul Merage
Chairman, MIG Capital LLC, formerly Falcon Investment Group
estimated worth: $1 billion
The Iranian-American entrepreneur saw a demand and filled it, launching him to wealthy status. Merage and his brother, David Merage, came up with Hot Pockets.
Together, they sold their Colorado-based Chef America Inc. to Nestlé SA for $2.6 billion in 2002.
This year he joins the ranks of billionaires, a move that presumes we estimated low in prior years and he added at least 10% to his fortune as an investor in a market where stocks and other assets classes did well over the past 12 months.
The estimate for Merage is based largely on the Chef America sale, after factoring in the stake of his brother (who lives primarily in Colorado), as well as any other ownership stakes, debt and taxes.
Our estimate is likely still conservative. Merage was rich before selling Chef America and could be worth much more.
In OC, Merage is largely known for his philanthropy and family investment firm, Newport Beach-based MIG Capital LLC, formerly Falcon Investment Group LLC.
MIG Capital (Merage Investment Group) and affiliates MIG Absolute Return, MIG Real Estate (formerly Stoneridge Capital Partners) and MIG Private Equity, collectively manage more than $1 billion in assets.
MIG Real Estate owns buildings in Califor-nia, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Denver.
A good chunk of Merage’s time is spent giving away money through the Merage Foundations.
The Merage Foundation for the American Dream focuses on immigration issues and chooses bright, graduating college seniors for $20,000 grants.
Merage himself is an immigrant, having come to the U.S. from Iran in the early 1960s.
His Children First foundation recruits skilled retirees to work in jobs in early childhood development with low-income kids.
The Merage Foundation for U.S.-Israel Trade seeks to promote business ties between the countries.
He’s also a major benefactor to local Jewish causes, such as the Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County in Irvine.
Merage is best known locally for his $30 million donation in 2005 to the University of California, Irvine’s business school, which is named after him. He sits on the dean’s advisory board at the business school.
He also has served on several boards, including those of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Pacific Symphony.
Merage’s sprawling Newport Coast estate is featured on online luxury home sites.
—Sherri Cruz
#13 – William Lyon
Chairman, chief executive, William Lyon Homes Inc.
estimated worth: $725 million
The muddled fortunes of the homebuilding industry haven’t helped provide much clarity for the wealth of Gen. William Lyon.
We’ve cut the estimate for the owner and chief executive of Newport Beach-based homebuilder William Lyon Homes Inc. by $50 million from last year to $725 million.
The decrease is the fourth we’ve made in the past five years for Lyon. At the peak of the housing boom, we conservatively estimated Lyon to be a billionaire.
This year’s decline counts its share of guesswork, based on recent earnings and the value of land holdings for the privately held builder.
The company lost about $137 million in 2010 on revenue of about $295 million. It owns more than 10,100 lots and had options to purchase an additional 417 as of the end of 2010.
A bulk of its land holdings are in Southern California, which is seeing sluggish sales so far in 2011 but holds the potential for big gains in value if a housing recovery takes hold.
Lyon took his company private in 2006, near the peak of the housing boom.
He bought out the rest of the company he didn’t own for about $275 million. The deal valued William Lyon Homes at close to $950 million at the time.
The company’s seen its share of losses since then, and has worked to improve its balance sheet.
In 2009, William Lyon Homes got $206 million in financing from Los Angeles-based real estate investor and private equity firm Colony Capital LLC. The company struck the deal to buy back debt and acquire land.
In regulatory filings made earlier this year, the company disclosed that its tangible net worth—the value of its land and other assets minus its liabilities—was $13 million at the end of 2010.
Colony Capital officials aren’t fazed by that, saying in regulatory filings the company “believes that the value of the collateral securing the loan is significantly in excess” of the unpaid balance on the senior secured loan, which still has a balance of $206 million.
The homebuilder is just part of the wealth of Lyon, who has been relinquishing more duties to his son, Bill H. Lyon, as president and chief operating officer.
Also part of his portfolio: Lyon Apartments Cos., which manages 11,000 apartments.
Many of apartments are believed to be owned by Lyon. Improved valuations for apartments over the past year likely countered much of any loss in value to his homebuilding operation.
Lyon also is known for his classic car and plane collection, estimated by some to be worth as much as $300 million. He has some 100 classic, antique cars, including 10 Duesenbergs, of which only 480 were made. He also has a collection of old warplanes and sponsors the Lyon Air Museum near John Wayne Airport.
Known as “The General,” 88-year-old Lyon served as a flyer in the Pacific, European and North African theaters during World War II. He rose to chief of the U.S. Air Force Reserve before retiring from the military in 1979 as a major general.
He’s one of the county’s biggest philanthropists and supporters of Republican candidates.
—Mark Mueller
#14 – Ronald Simon
Founder, chairman, RSI Holding Corp.
estimated worth: $675 million
Ron Simon’s new gig is selling homes in a market where home sales are few and far between.
Simon is founder and chairman of Newport Beach-based RSI Holding Corp., the parent company of household cabinet maker RSI Home Products Inc.
We estimate Simon’s wealth at $675 million, up from $650 million a year ago, based on a modest increase in the shares of building products companies over the past year, his new business and the chunk of wealth he likely invests in other places, including stock and other asset classes that have seen gains.
In 2008, Simon sold half of RSI to Canada’s Onex Corp. for $318 million.
Like others in the housing industry, RSI is believed to have felt the industry’s slowdown in 2008 and 2009. But after bottoming out in 2009, some publicly traded rivals have begun to see a rebound, including a rise of about 10% in the past year.
In 2009, Simon started a homebuilding business, RSI Development. The venture has $100 million in funding and builds easily assembled, low-priced homes.
The new venture’s seen some success. Last month the company announced selling out all 103 homes at its initial development in Menifee, east of Temecula. It was the top-selling development in the Inland Empire’s hard-hit housing market of late, according to market watchers.
RSI Development also is building in Buena Park and elsewhere in the Inland Empire. It’s unclear how much of the $100 million investment in RSI Development comes directly from Simon. The new company is reportedly making a profit (see Serial Entrepreneurs, page 1).
Simon was born in East Los Angeles to a Russian mother and English father.
After studying engineering at Los Angeles City College, Simon wanted to start his own business. Instead, his father convinced him to join his medicine cabinet business, Perma-Bilt.
Simon eventually took control and grew it to be the largest maker of medicine cabinets, vanities and marble countertops.
In 1987, he sold it to an Australian company at a time when Asian manufacturers were making it tougher to compete.
Simon, who had stayed on as a Perma-Bilt director, came up with a plan to compete that was rejected by the new owners. So he took the plan and founded RSI. A few years later Perma-Bilt was out of business.
Philanthropy is big for Simon. His Ronald Simon Family Foundation has awarded more than 425 scholarships valued at about $14 million since 2003.
Simon also supports the arts, healthcare and other causes.
—Mark Mueller
#15 – Vincent “Vinny” Smith
Executive chairman, Quest Software Inc.
estimated worth: $650 million
Higher sales and an uptick in share price at Aliso Viejo’s Quest Software Inc. have boosted the wealth of its unassuming strategic guru.
While Vincent “Vinny” Smith prefers to stay behind the curtain of the county’s largest publicly traded software company, his influence is center stage.
Quest has been on a buying spree during the last year as it picked up security-related technol-ogies and rolled them into its product lineup. It also has made several investments and partnerships to bolster its position in that segment.
Its security software suite aims to help make corporate networks more secure and help companies verify to auditors and others that they’re protecting them.
Smith, the chairman and former chief executive, heads up the company’s strategic buying. He turned over daily operations to current Chief Executive Doug Garn in 2008 after more than a decade in the role.
The company’s shares are about flat in the last 12 months to a recent market value of about $1.7 billion.
We’ve estimated Smith at $650 million this year, up from $625 million last year, based on his Quest holdings and a revaluation of his worth.
Smith owns 31 million shares with a recent market value of about $590 million.
An expected rebound in corporate spending, coupled with the ongoing economic recovery, is expected to give the business software maker a boost this year.
Quest topped $784 million in revenue in the 12 months through March, up nearly 12% from a year earlier.
Quest makes software that helps corporations become more efficient by improving on existing applications by Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and others.
Smith’s a low-key multimillionaire who goes by Vinny and often sports jeans and a cap.
Known as a savvy investor, Smith has said he likes to dabble in various ventures, including real estate and restaurants.
Smith started his career with Oracle after graduating from the University of Delaware in 1986. In 1992, he started San Francisco’s Patrol Software with an Oracle colleague. BMC Software Inc. bought Patrol in 1994.
Smith’s interest in Quest grew through an investment his Insight Capital Partners made in 1995. He took a seat on Quest’s board and gradually became more involved, becoming chief executive in 1997 and chairman a year later after leaving a life on the Colorado ski slopes.
Smith supports several charitable causes, including the Miocean Foundation, Augie’s Quest for Lou Gehrig’s disease and various kids programs.
—Chris Casacchia
#16 – Janie Tsao
President, Miven Venture Partners
#16 – Victor Tsao
General partner, Miven Venture Partners
estimated worth: $600 million
Janie and Victor Tsao, one of Orange County’s wealthiest business couples, like to keep a rather low profile in their ventures.
It’s been that way since they sold Linksys Group Inc. to Cisco Systems Inc. for $500 million in 2003. They stayed on for a while after the deal closed, working for Cisco in China, but cut ties since then.
Cisco largely has absorbed Linksys, a top maker of routers and other home networking gear. Its campus near the University of California, Irvine, became a hub for Cisco’s consumer efforts, which are aimed at spurring sales of the company’s routers. The pending shutdown of the company’s Flip video camera operation and recent disappointing results now has Cisco making cutbacks in Irvine and companywide.
The Tsaos run Miven Ventures Partners, a $100 million venture fund. The company doesn’t have a website and rarely touts a financing deal, but we did find a few investments it made in the past year.
In June Miven participated in a $24 million third-round financing for ViVOtech Inc., a Santa Clara software maker for business payment and marketing. The company has raised some $75 million. Miven, a prior investor, could be in for a payday down the road if its planned initial public offering comes to fruition.
Late last year the venture capital firm joined a handful of investors in a $12 million financing round for Celeno Communications, an Israeli chipmaker that specializes in Wi-Fi applications for high-definition video in homes.
Miven had been a previous investor in the company.
Victor Tsao spends a few months of each year on the road, looking for investments in Silicon Valley, China, India, Israel and Vietnam.
Janie Tsao is president of Miven and runs day-to-day operations. She also does startup advisory work and heads the Tsao Family Foundation.
A few of Miven’s investments didn’t survive the recent recession.
Sunnyvale-based Tzero Technologies Inc. shut down in 2009. India’s TechTribe Networks, a job referral website, was said to be looking for a buyer.
Miven scored a win last year with Sunnyvale’s ZeroG Wireless Inc., which was bought by Arizona’s Microchip Technology Inc. for undisclosed terms.
We estimate the Tsaos at $600 million, up about 10% from a year ago, based on the as-sumption that their investment savvy was good for at least that much over the past 12 months.
Our estimate of their wealth begins with the sale to Cisco and other investments they’re said to have made since then. They are believed to have diversified out of most Cisco shares.
Both serve on various advisory boards for startups and continue giving to causes in education and medical research, among others.
The Miven Venture Partners Scholarship was established by the Tsao Family Foundation and Miven Venture Partners at California State University, Fullerton, to support students who need financial assistance.
Victor Tsao is big on mentoring entrepreneurs in the U.S. and China, where both of the Tsaos were born.
—Chris Casacchia
