Who are the 10 richest billionaires in US finance?
Forbes magazine just came out with its list of the top billionaires in the US.
We narrowed the list down to look at the most successful people in finance, which includes investments, trading, hedge funds and money management.
Read on to see the 10 wealthiest people in finance.
10. Philip Anschutz
Net worth: US$11.3 billion
Age: 78
Industry: diversified investments
Source of wealth: self-made
Reclusive billionaire Philip Anschutz has built a fortune across oil, railways, real estate, sports and entertainment.
Anschutz also owns the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings team and part of the LA Lakers’ basketball franchise.
He is trying to build the world’s biggest wind farm in Wyoming.
9. David Tepper
Net worth: US$11.6 billion
Age: 61 Industry: hedge funds
Source of wealth: self-made; Appaloosa Management
Tepper founded his hedge fund, Appaloosa Management, in 1993, and now manages US$15 billion.
He bought the Carolina Panthers American football team for US$2.3 billion earlier this year.
In September, Tepper said that his firm had reduced its holdings of US stocks.
“If you ask me what inning we’re in, I think it’s a late-innings game,” Tepper, who manages about US$14 billion in assets, told CNBC of the nine-year bull market in stocks.
Appaloosa in May disclosed it had sold its entire stake in Apple, which had previously made up more than 7 per cent of its portfolio.
The fund is also pushing for change at pharmaceutical company Allergan.
8. Steve Cohen
Net worth: US$13 billion
Age: 62
Industry: hedge funds
Source of wealth: self-made; Point72 Asset Management
For years Cohen ran SAC Capital, one of the most successful hedge funds ever.
He was forced to shut down SAC after the firm pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges.
Cohen then launched Point72 Asset Management and started taking outside capital in 2018 after running it previously as a family office. He now manages US$13 billion.
Earlier this year, a female employee, Lauren Bonner, filed a lawsuit alleging widespread gender discrimination at the fund, including stark wage discrepancies between men and women doing the same work.
Doug Haynes, the firm’s former president and a former McKinsey executive who was named in the suit, left soon after.
Bonner’s lawsuit was dismissed in a federal court at the end of September, and will now be arbitrated.
7. Steve Schwartzman
Net worth: US$13.8 billion
Age: 71
Industry: investments
Source of wealth: self-made; Blackstone Group
Schwarzman, the son of a dry goods store owner, founded Blackstone in 1985 alongside Pete Peterson. Now the world’s largest private equity firm, Blackstone manages US$439 billion in assets.
Schwarzman took home a pay package of US$786 million last year, making him the private equity industry’s highest paid executive.
Over the past few years Schwarzman has taken a back seat in the day-to-day decisions at Blackstone but he still remains prominent in fundraising.
Earlier this year, Blackstone elevated the firm’s real estate head Jonathan Gray to president and chief operating officer, which paves the way for him to replace Schwarzman as CEO.
In its biggest deal since the financial crisis, in January Blackstone agreed to buy a majority stake in the financial and risk business of Thomson Reuters in a US$20 billion deal.
6. Carl Icahn
Net worth: US$16.3 billion
Age: 82
Industry: investments
Source of wealth: self-made; Icahn Enterprises
Icahn has made a lifelong habit and lucrative career out of agitating undervalued and poorly managed companies to change their ways.
Since founding his own investment firm in 1968, Icahn has become one of the most powerful people in finance, investing in scores of high-profile companies, including RJR Nabisco, Philips Petroleum, Viacom, Marvel, Time Warner, Netflix and Herbalife.
Icahn Enterprises now has around US$8 billion in assets under management.
In August, Icahn reversed his position on US health insurer Cigna’s purchase of pharmaceutical subscription company Express Scripts.
Icahn has said that he has no plans to retire from pestering corporate executives.
He was a special adviser to President Trump on regulation until his resignation in August 2017.
5. Abigail Johnson
Net worth: US$17.3 billion
Age: 65
Industry: money management
Source of wealth: inherited; Fidelity Investments
Abigail Johnson has served as CEO of mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments since 2014, when she took over from her father Ned Johnson III.
Her grandfather founded the company in 1946.
Johnson owns around 24.5 per cent stake of the firm, which manages US$2.5 trillion.
She is the first woman to run Fidelity and is known for being very private.
Earlier this year, she made a rare speech in an effort to address inappropriate workplace conduct such as sexual harassment at Fidelity.
She has also publicly championed the use of the cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
4. Ray Dalio
Net worth: US$18.1 billion
Age: 69
Industry: hedge funds
Source of wealth: self-made; Bridgewater Associates
Dalio’s hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, is the biggest in the world, managing a portfolio of around US$160 billion in global investments.
At the top of his industry and having amassed an enormous fortune, Dalio has more recently focused on giving away money and advice.
He’s taken the Giving Pledge, committing to donate most of his wealth to charity.
Dalio has also revealed his highly coveted “investment secrets”, albeit in an unorthodox manner for a hedge funder, in a 30-minute YouTube video.
His 123-page, self-published manual on his principles of money management and leadership is also seen as somewhat of a bible among the investment world.
Dalio has always taken a radical approach to management, making everything he and his fund does completely transparent to employees.
It has worked well for him, too: Bridgewater, while sometimes viewed as “cultish”, is one of the most coveted places to work in finance.
Dalio has said that he attributes his success, in part, to reminding himself that history repeats itself and keeping track of the decisions he has made that did not work.
To make sure that Bridgewater runs without him, he has recently stepped back from management responsibilities while still remaining active in the investment strategy.
Dalio recently sat down with Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget to discuss his new book, which breaks down the anatomy of credit crises throughout history.
3. James Simons
Net worth: US$20 billion
Age: 80
Industry: hedge funds
Source of wealth: self-made; Renaissance Technologies
Before revolutionising the hedge fund industry with his mathematics-based approach, “Quant King” James Simons worked as a code breaker for the US Department of Defense during the Vietnam war, but was fired after criticising the war in the press.
He chaired the mathematics department at Stony Brook University for a decade until leaving in 1978 to start a quantitative-trading firm.
That firm, now called Renaissance Technologies, has more than US$57 billion in assets under management among its many funds.
He’s given away over US$2.7 billion in his lifetime.
2. Thomas Peterffy
Net worth: US$20.2 billion
Age: 74
Industry: discount brokerage
Source of wealth: self-made; founded Interactive Brokers
Peterffy, who is frequently considered the father of modern trading, founded discount trading company Interactive Brokers in 1993. He took the company public in 2007, but still owns most of it.
Peterffy immigrated to the US from Hungary in 1965 with no money and didn’t speak any English. He started off as a software designer and then bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange to trade options in the 1970s.
He built a handheld computer and used it to trade on the floor of the exchange, the first time that had been done.
He’s also known for his staunch opposition to socialism.
He ran a series of television adverts during the 2012 election cycle warning about the dangers of wealth distribution. Peterffy also been public about his support for President Donald Trump.
1. Warren Buffett
Net worth: US$88.3 billion
Age: 88
Industry: diversified investments
Source of wealth: self-made; Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Buffett started his prodigious investing career at a young age.
As a child he delivered newspapers on his bike, and by the age of 11 the precocious Nebraska native had bought his first shares in the stock market – Cities Service Preferred at US$38 apiece – and sold them for a US$5 profit.
He was rejected from Harvard Business School, so Buffett went to Columbia Business School instead and learned under iconic value investor Benjamin Graham, who would become a mentor to the budding financier. Buffett worked as a securities analyst in the early 1950s before starting his own investment firm.
He bought textile company Berkshire Hathaway in 1969, transforming it into a holding company that would house the many lucrative investments that helped build his massive fortune and earn the nickname “The Oracle of Omaha”.
The array of portfolio companies and investments that made him rich may appear random – he’s bet on companies including Coca-Cola, American Express, Geico, Fruit of the Loom, Dairy Queen, and General Motors – but they are all cash-generating machines that offer long-term value.
A frugal man with a fondness for junk food, perhaps the most impressive part of Buffett’s US$88 billion fortune is that it doesn’t include US$31.5 billion has already given away. He’s good friends with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with whom he collaborated to create the Giving Pledge, a promise for billionaires to give away at least half of their wealth to charity. He has said that he will give away 99 per cent of his wealth.
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From the founder of a ‘cultish’ hedge fund to a ‘Quant King’ mathematics star to a frugal man fond of junk food, who is America’s wealthiest financier?