Page 148 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

• B E G I N N I N G S •
119. DAVID SUN Son James is the frequently vili-
fied CEO of MSG, which owns the
$5.5 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: ) New York Knicks. Dolan served in
SOURCE: COMPUTER HARDWARE the U.S. Air Force and briefly stud-
AGE: 68 RESIDENCE: IRVINE, CA ied at John Carroll University be-
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: fore dropping out to create sports
newsreels for local stations out of
119. JOHN TU his house.

$5.5 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: ( 125. BRUCE KOVNER
SOURCE: COMPUTER HARDWARE
144 AGE: 78 RESIDENCE: ROLLING HILLS, $5.3 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: (
CA
SOURCE: HEDGE FUNDS
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: AGE: 74 RESIDENCE: NEW YORK CITY
T Before becoming billionaires, Tu
S PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
I and Sun were immigrants from
L Kovner worked as a New York City
Taiwan, with Tu scraping by run-
E cab driver before founding Caxton
H ning a one-man gift shop with im- Associates, a global macro hedge
T ported Chinese collectibles. The
fund that he ran for 28 years. He
two met in a basketball league in retired in 2011.
the 1980s and founded a comput-
er-memory company that pros-
pered until the 1987 stock-market 127. RAY LEE HUNT
crash. Undeterred, the pair start-
$5.2 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: %
ed computer-products firm Kings-
SOURCE: OIL, REAL ESTATE
ton Technology in October 1987. AGE: 76 RESIDENCE: DALLAS
Today, Kingston generates $7.5 bil-
PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
lion in revenue.
Hunt started out in the oil in-
dustry in 1958 as a summer em-
119. SAM ZELL ployee on the oilfields owned 100. DENNIS WASHINGTON
by his father, the wildcatter
$5.5 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: *
SOURCE: REAL ESTATE, PRIVATE H.L. Hunt. Hunt Oil has oper- $6.3 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: )
ations in Texas and Peru, while SOURCE: CONSTRUCTION, MINING
EQUITY
AGE: 78 RESIDENCE: CHICAGO its ventures in Yemen have been AGE: 85 RESIDENCE: MISSOULA, MT
shuttered since April 2015 due
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
to the country’s ongoing civil
The real estate kingpin got his In October 2018, Washington’s newly acquired mining outfit Domin-
war. Hunt cashed out on his in-
first taste of the industry as ion Diamond unearthed a 552-carat yellow diamond 135 miles south
vestment in the publicly traded
a sophomore at the Universi- electricity operator InfraREIT of the Arctic Circle, the largest ever found in North America. That
ty of Michigan, where he man- same month his 332-foot yacht Attessa IV collided with a commer-
when Oncor acquired it for $1.3
aged a 15-unit student apart- cial fishing boat, causing one death and several injuries. The indus-
billion in May, earning him
ment building in exchange for nearly $330 million. trialist, whose holdings include a railroad and a copper mine, bagged
a free room. By the time he fin- groceries and shined shoes as an adolescent and by age 15 was work-
ished law school in 1966, he ing construction jobs. From age 17 to 19, he operated machinery
owned more than a dozen prop- 128. TED LERNER & FAMILY in Ketchikan, Alaska, where the above photograph was taken.
erties. Zell went on to build Eq- He started his Washington Cos. in 1964 with a $30,000 loan and a
$5.1 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: (
uity Residential, one of the na- leased tractor.
SOURCE: REAL ESTATE
tion’s largest publicly traded
AGE: 94 RESIDENCE: CHEVY CHASE, MD
apartment REITs, along with an
PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
office empire he sold for $39 bil-
lion in 2007. During law school, Lerner sold to lead Cargill, the $113.5 billion on the streets of Brooklyn. He
real estate on weekends to help (sales) agricultural giant. He took those skills into running
125. CHARLES DOLAN support his widowed mother was CEO from 1976 to 1995. In Odd Lot Trading, which sold
August the company announced
discounted merchandise un-
and younger siblings. Unfulfilled
& FAMILY as a lawyer, he borrowed $250 that it was partnering with the loaded by manufacturers and
from his wife, Annette, in 1952 to University of Illinois at Urbana- other retailers. He later in-
$5.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: ( start selling houses for a build- Champaign to open an innova- vested in a number of bank-
SOURCE: CABLE TELEVISION er. Over six years he sold 22,000 tion lab focused on using tech- rupt companies—including,
AGE: 93 RESIDENCE: OYSTER BAY, NY nology to modernize the global eventually, comic book com-
homes and decided to try his
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: hand at development. Today his food system. MacMillan owns pany Marvel, which he bought
Dolan sold Cablevision for $17.7 Lerner Enterprises is one of the an estimated 11% of the com- in 1998. Perlmutter revived
billion to Altice in 2016, but the largest owners of real estate in pany. the company with movies like
broadcast billionaire, along with the Washington, D.C., area. Spiderman, The Hulk and
his wife, Helen, and their six chil- 128. ISAAC PERLMUTTER Iron Man before selling it to
dren, still owns controlling stakes 128. WHITNEY MACMILLAN Disney for $4 billion in 2009.
in Madison Square Garden Co. $5.1 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: ) He remains chairman of Mar-
and AMC Networks. A lawsuit $5.1 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: @ SOURCE: MARVEL COMICS vel but is not involved in the
filed by the Dolan family against SOURCE: CARGILL AGE: 76 RESIDENCE: PALM BEACH, FL movie side of the business,
Altice for allegedly ignoring prom- AGE: 90 RESIDENCE: VERO BEACH, FL PHILANTHROPY SCORE: which won big this year with
ises of the merger agreement and PHILANTHROPY SCORE: An Israeli immigrant, Perl- Avengers: Endgame, the high-
equitable fraud, which Altice de- MacMillan was the last member mutter came to America with est-grossing film of all time,
nied, was settled in September. of the Cargill-MacMillan family $250 in 1967 and peddled toys at $2.8 billion.

O C T O B E R 3 1 , 2 0 1 9
F O R B E S . C O M
WEALTH INHERITED VS. SELF-MADE CHANGE IN WEALTH KEY: S UP T DOWN SIGNATORY OF THE PHILANTHROPY SCORE
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) WX UNCHANGED Ì NEW TO LIST 3 RETURNEE GIVING PLEDGE