Page 147 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

108. GEORGE ROBERTS 114. BUBBA CATHY Bubba runs the company’s Geor- 119. ARTHUR BLANK
gia-based Dwarf House and Tru-
$6.1 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: * $5.7 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: $ ett’s Grill restaurants. Their late $5.5 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: (
SOURCE: PRIVATE EQUITY SOURCE: CHICK-FIL-A father, Truett Cathy, opened his SOURCE: HOME DEPOT
AGE: 76 RESIDENCE: ATHERTON, CA AGE: 65 RESIDENCE: ATLANTA first chicken shack in an Atlanta AGE: 77 RESIDENCE: ATLANTA
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: PHILANTHROPY SCORE: mall in 1967. PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
After graduating from Claremont This year, Blank paid more than
McKenna College, Roberts got a 114. DAN CATHY 114. ERNEST GARCIA II $180 million for his new 240-
job at Bear Stearns, where he was foot yacht, DreAMBoat (AMB
mentored by Jerome Kohlberg. $5.7 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: $ $5.7 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: ( are his initials). He’s come a long
SOURCE: CHICK-FIL-A SOURCE: USED CARS
The duo plus Roberts’ cousin way since he started his first
AGE: 66 RESIDENCE: ATLANTA AGE: 62 RESIDENCE: TEMPE, AZ 143
Henry Kravis (No. 112) cofounded business—a laundry pickup ser-
PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
KKR in 1976, making their mark PHILANTHROPY SCORE: vice—as a student at Babson.
as early practitioners of lever- The brothers’ fast-food chicken Garcia spent decades in the used- In 1978, Blank and his co-work- T
aged buyouts. Now Roberts is a chain continues to dominate— car business, building DriveTime er Bernard Marcus (No. 95) were H
pioneer in giving, where his REDF both in sales and customer satis- Automotive into one of the na- fired from hardware store Handy E

(Roberts Enterprise Development faction. Chick-fil-A is the favorite tion’s biggest sellers of used cars. Dan. That year they dreamed up F
Fund) does venture philanthropy, fast-food restaurant in Ameri- But most of his fortune comes The Home Depot from a coffee O
R
backing more than 175 social ca, according to a recent Mar- from publicly traded Carvana, an shop in Los Angeles and, with B
enterprises in 26 states. ket Force survey. With more than online platform for buying used help from investor Ken Lan- E
S
2,400 restaurants in 47 states, the cars and getting auto loans co- gone (No. 187), opened their first
108. RONDA STRYKER chain says it had record revenues founded by his son Ernest (No. two stores in Atlanta the next 0
4
of more than $10 billion in 2018. 363) initially as a subsidiary of year. Blank made his first mil- 0
$6.1 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: @ Dan is chairman and CEO while DriveTime. lion when the company went
SOURCE: MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
public in 1981. He also owns the
AGE: 65 RESIDENCE: PORTAGE, MI MLS team Atlanta United and is
• B E G I N N I N G S • 114. TAMARA GUSTAVSON
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: the majority owner of the Atlan-
Her fortune increased by half $5.7 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: @ ta Falcons.
a billion dollars thanks to ris- SOURCE: SELF-STORAGE
ing shares of medical device and AGE: 57 RESIDENCE: LEXINGTON, KY 119. EDWARD ROSKI JR.
equipment maker Stryker Corp., PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
which her grandfather Homer Kentucky’s richest person is the $5.5 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: %
founded. The only family member SOURCE: REAL ESTATE
largest shareholder of self-stor-
to sit on the Stryker board, she is AGE: 80 RESIDENCE: LOS ANGELES
age company Public Storage, co-
also a director of Michigan bank founded by her father, B. Wayne PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
Greenleaf Trust and an active
Hughes (No. 306). Gustavson Roski served as an officer in the
philanthropist.
started working at Public Stor- U.S. Marine Corps after graduat-
age in her early 20s and was a se- ing from USC in 1962. He served
112. HENRY KRAVIS nior vice president when she left in Vietnam and received two Pur-
to raise her kids in 2003. Her ple Hearts. He joined his father’s
$6 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: * husband is president of Spend- real estate firm Majestic Real-
SOURCE: PRIVATE EQUITY thrift Farm, the horse-breeding ty upon his return in 1966. Today
AGE: 75 RESIDENCE: NEW YORK CITY 100. RALPH LAUREN farm owned by Hughes, home of the company is one of the largest
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: the 2017 Preakness winner, Cloud in the country with more than 78
Kravis and his cofounder George $6.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE Computing. million square feet of mostly in-
SCORE: (
Roberts (No. 108) are in their 43rd dustrial property—warehouses
SOURCE: RALPH LAUREN
year running KKR, which has 118. TOM GORES and retail space.
AGE: 80 RESIDENCE: NEW YORK
grown to over $200 billion in as-
CITY
sets. Kravis and his wife, Marie-Jo- $5.6 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: * 119. ROBERT ROWLING
PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
sée, who have given away an esti- SOURCE: PRIVATE EQUITY
mated $200 million, promised $10 Born Ralph Lifshitz, Lau- AGE: 55 RESIDENCE: BEVERLY HILLS, CA $5.5 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: %
million to help repair Notre-Dame ren’s first job was working PHILANTHROPY SCORE: SOURCE: HOTELS, INVESTMENTS
cathedral after the fire in April. at the department store Al- The Beverly Hills financier is AGE: 66 RESIDENCE: DALLAS
exander’s in high school.
closing in on his largest fund PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
After serving in the U.S.
113. MARTHA INGRAM Army, he sold ties at Brooks yet; his Platinum Equity’s assets Rowling is spending $455 mil-
& FAMILY Brothers before launching under management have soared lion building the Omni Stillwa-
FAIRCHILD ARCHIVE-PENSKE MEDIA-SHUTTERSTOCK
70% since last year to $19.4 bil-
his Polo line of ties in 1967 ter Woods resort on 600 acres
$5.8 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: $ (pictured above). Earli- lion as a result. Gores attributes in Frisco, Texas. In partnership
SOURCE: BOOK DISTRIBUTION, er this year his firm Ralph his talent for business to years with the PGA, which is moving
TRANSPORTATION spent watching his dad, who ran its headquarters there, he’ll build
Lauren, which has $6.3 bil-
AGE: 84 RESIDENCE: NASHVILLE a small corner grocery store in two golf courses. Other projects
lion in sales, became one of
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: 32 major fashion and textile Flint, Michigan, where Gores are under way in Boston and
worked in his youth. Today, he’s Oklahoma City. With his father,
Her late husband, Bronson, found- companies to sign a “fash- pledged $10 million for relief
ed Ingram Industries in 1978. Her ion pact” pledging to re- Reese, Rowling sold most of their
amid the city’s ongoing water oil and gas business for $500 mil-
sons Orrin and John now serve as duce their impact on the en-
crisis. In nearby Detroit, he lion in 1989; seven years later,
CEO and chairman of the $2.5 bil- vironment. In June, Lauren bankrolled a new $90 million he bought Omni Hotels. He also
lion (est. revenue) group, which was bestowed with an hon- headquarters and training center
operates in book distribution and orary knighthood by Prince owns Gold’s Gym. He donated 20
manufacturing, digital storage and Charles, a first for an Ameri- for the NBA’s Pistons, which he acres in Dallas for the construc-
acquired from Platinum inves- tion of a new Salvation Army
marine transportation. can designer.
tors in 2015. center.

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