Orange County’s wealthiest people enjoyed a good year. Most on our 2017 list, see page 16 of stand-alone Special Report, grew their fortunes, some substantially. The roster grew by two, nearly 5% from 45 to 47. The Business Journal’s “cutoff” is $250 million.
The number of entries grew by three, and lost one with the passing of Newport Coast resident and industrialist Toshiaki Ogasawara.
We estimated the combined net worth of the 47 entries—48 individuals, as husband and wife Victor and Janie Tsao have partnered in their businesses—at about $75.7 billion, a balance-sheet boost just shy of 5%.
The personal equity increase is below last year’s 18% bump—a year that included a few fairly anomalous events, like the Avago buy of Broadcom Corp. at a substantial premium. (And the merged company’s stock is still running).
Still, the collective increase is well below the stock market—14% on the S&P 500 in the past 12 months—and below Orange County residential real estate, whose median price jumped about 9%.
Analysis of the familiar names and a reading of our profiles will reveal the primary explanation—OC’s wealthiest are giving away parts of their fortunes (see “Sharing the Wealth,” page 1).
Among the big philanthropists is Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren, who’s also atop the list once more with an estimated fortune of $17 billion. Like almost every list entry, the source of his wealth came from business ownership, in his case 100% of a diversified real estate developer.
Healthcare entrepreneur Joe Kiani had the best year; we estimated a 53% increase in the Masimo CEO’s net worth. Kiani is also a business owner, with about 12% of the public company he founded. The device maker’s shares grew about 86% in the past 12 months.
The OC list also reflects increasing diversity of industries among Orange County’s wealthiest.
In contrast, seven, or 70%, of the Forbes 400 Top 10 are technology titans and made their fortunes through majority stakes in their public companies.
Here, real estate was the most popular path to wealth reflected on the list but still comprises only 38% of the total by industry. Orange County’s wealthiest represent just about every major business silo. There are two auto dealership owners; three manufacturers; five in the food industry; five who made much of their fortunes in finance; a few who inherited their wealth; and yes, the OC 47 also has technologists, nine of them, whose fortunes are good for 30% of the total as the second most common path to major prosperity here.
Charles Dunlop is among the newcomers. In all of the profiles, we trust you’ll find items of interest, and perhaps some inspiration—Dunlop’s tale is an exemplar of the latter. He’s Orange County-bred. He built a local company to find cures for terminal diseases. And this month, when Japan’s Konica Minolta bought Aliso-Viejo based Ambry Genetics, the deal put Dunlop on our list and made small fortunes for a few childhood friends.
“They were very patient,” Dunlop said, “and loved our company and what we were doing.”
The Process
Our list criteria are that the individuals either made their fortunes here or call Orange County home.
In compiling the list and producing this issue, our reporters spent weeks, and truly parts of every week of the year, reviewing company assets, examining public records and talking with experts and trusted sources to make our best-faith estimate of net worths.
We are conservative every year in the estimates. We look for benchmarks with private companies, factor in balance-sheet items, like debt, and wealth transfers, like the aforementioned charitable giving.
Not every document is accessible, and neither is every individual.
And so we know our list of OC’s wealthiest people is incomplete, but we send our sincere appreciation to all of those who helped us compile our 17th OC Business Journal’s OC’s Wealthiest.
