HENRY T. NICHOLAS III
CO-FOUNDER
BROADCOM
ACTIVISM: Nicholas, with an enormous fortune from Broadcom, known for support for passing a crime victims’ rights bill known as Marsy’s Law. It is named for his younger sister Marsalee, who was murdered in 1983. It is now reportedly a law in at least 12 states in varying forms.
KEY METRIC: Broadcom shares doubled from a year ago and were trading at $153.30 as of July 25.
THE TWO HENRYS: Nicholas established Broadcom in 1991 in a spare bedroom of his Redondo Beach home with fellow OC’s Wealthiest member Henry Samueli. Nicholas’s 2008 divorce is the primary reason the Business Journal’s $8.4B estimate for Nicholas lags that of Samueli, who remains chairman of Broadcom. Nicholas resigned as CEO from Broadcom in 2003 when he was 43, five years after taking the company public. It was sold to Avago Technologies in 2016.
ACADEMIC/PHILANTHROPY: Business-related news regarding Nicholas has been slow for several years since the Avago sale. News now largely comes from his academic nonprofit Nicholas Academic Centers, which was co-founded with retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Jack Mandel. It has multiple centers in Santa Ana and has graduated more than 1,000 underserved, primarily Latino students in the Santa Ana Unified School District. Graduates have reportedly received over tens of millions of dollars in scholarships, attending top schools, such as Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Dartmouth. Some 2,270 scholars have graduated from the NAC, which says 100% of NAC graduates enrolled in post-secondary education. Last year, Nicholas attended the 15th annual graduation ceremony for the Nicholas Academic Centers.
