This year’s crop of OC’s richest residents managed to outpace the market by a longshot, thanks to a number of additions and several deals that helped boost the combined wealth of the 45 entries to $72.5 billion.
That’s an increase of nearly 18% from a year ago, when 41 entries accounted for a net worth of $61.5 billion.
This year’s total is about on par with the gross domestic product of the Persian Gulf country of Oman.
Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren maintains his perennial position atop the list with an estimated net worth of $16.8 billion.
Three of five new names—developer Mike Harrah (see related story, page 1), attorney and hotelier Tim Busch, and global personage-cum-venture-capital and private-equity investor Peter Ueberroth—round out the list at $250 million apiece.
Another newcomer, Joe Kiani, founder of Irvine-based medical device maker Masimo Corp., debuts with an estimated net worth of $375 million, in a tie for the No. 34 spot.
Real estate developer Peter Cooper took the No. 22 ranking with an estimate of $750 million.
Both Cooper and Harrah returned to the list after absences of several years. We had removed Cooper from the list based on a lack of information on whether he calls OC home—that’s been confirmed this year. Harrah dropped off the list when the Great Recession cut into estimates on the value of his real estate holdings—a dip that he seems to have overcome.
Newcomers
The new members of the list account for nearly $2 billion of the overall increase of $11 billion compared with last year’s entries.
A couple of executives who have been on every list since the Business Journal started the annual count in 2001 (see page 24 for related Data Drill in special section, accompanying this issue) accounted for another $1 billion apiece—Henry Samueli is tied for the No. 2 spot with an estimated $4 billion, while Henry T. Nicholas III is tied for No. 6 at $3.2 billion. The Broadcom Corp. co-founders each got a big bump from the premium the company fetched in its $37 billion sale to Avago Technologies Ltd., which has since changed its name to Broadcom Ltd.
Another pair of entrepreneurial executives—Rodney Sacks and Hilton Schlosberg—chipped in with nearly $3 billion more of this year’s total. The two are tied at No. 9, each with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. That’s a gain of $1.4 billion apiece, based on a big run-up in the value of shares of their Corona-based Monster Beverage Corp. (see related story, page 1).
Bren’s big base and a strong year on the Irvine Ranch accounted for $600 million of this year’s estimated overall increase.
New information on another developer, Igor Olenicoff, led the Business Journal to increase his estimate by $500 million for a total of $4 billion, which puts him in a tie at the No. 2 spot.
We raised our estimates for David Sun and John Tu of Kingston Technology Corp. by $500 million each, based largely on new benchmarks that came from the sale of SanDisk, a longtime competitor in the flash memory segment, to Western Digital Corp.
Wang Weighs In
Another big boost came from a deal that sent shock waves from Irvine to Hollywood last week, when William Wang added another $750 million in wealth to the overall estimate for this year’s list when he struck a deal to sell Vizio Inc. to Beijing-based conglomerate LeEco for $2 billion.
Wang, who co-founded the Irvine-based consumer electronics brand in 2002, built Vizio into a perennial contender for the U.S. title in smart TV sales and the market leader in soundbars.
“This is the modern story of how David took on Goliath,” Wang said during a press conference in Hollywood announcing the deal. “We had to fight competition from all over the world. Today we have more than 70 million devices in use in the U.S.”
The sale, which includes Vizio’s hardware, software and intellectual property, boosted Wang’s estimated wealth from $350 million last year to $1.1 billion, based on his 54.7% stake in Vizio.
He becomes one of 19 billionaires on the list, and the lone new member of the upper echelon on the annual list.
Wang will step down from Vizio and become chairman and chief executive of its developing data business, Inscape, which will spin out and operate as a separate privately owned company.
Wang will control 51% of Inscape, which will maintain its Irvine headquarters, with LeEco as minority shareholder.
Inscape struck a 10-year deal to license its software to LeEco, providing a solid foundation for the local venture, which aims to monetize data collected from millions of consumers who own Vizio TVs.
Process
Our listings are limited to individuals who live here or have derived most of their wealth from OC.
It takes an estimated worth of $250 million to crack this week’s list, the same threshold as last year.
We’ve spent weeks looking into individual holdings, company assets, public records and press clippings, and talking with trusted sources as we’ve researched the list.
Our numbers are generally conservative, ballpark figures. We’ve sought to take assets into account, 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 those who we believe are OC’s wealthiest people. But we are sure to have missed some. We look forward to comments on those we might have overlooked.
