Want to be a Texas billionaire? Might be good to be in the pipeline business.
There are 52 billionaires in Texas (same as the number of cards in a deck), according to the latest Forbes list and, among the top 10, half gained their cheddar via some involvement with pipelines.
Fort Worth’s Alice Walton, whose pipeline to wealth is Wal-Mart, come in on top in Texas with a net worth of $46 billion, up from $38.2 billion just last year when Forbes ranked the richest Americans.
Walton, the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, is No. 16 among the world’s 2,208 billionaires. Coming in No. 2 in Texas is Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies, who began building PCs in his dorm room at the University of Texas and now has a net worth estimated at $22.7 billion. He could buy that dorm room and more.
Fort Worth oilman and investor Robert Bass is No. 404 on the list with $4.9 billion. Brother Sid Bass is No. 703 on the list with a net worth of $3.3 billion, followed by Ed Bass and Lee Bass, both at No. 965 with a net worth of $2.5 billion each.
Fort Worth’s David Bonderman, who has made his fortune as the leader of investment firm TPG, is at No. 924 with $2.6 billion. Others with Fort Worth ties include H. Ross Perot Jr., who oversees Hillwood’s developments, including AllianceTexas, comes in at No. 1157 with a net worth of $2.1 billion.
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Wal-Mart may be a retail king, but Amazon/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos took the top spot for the first time with a fortune of $112 billion, up $39.2 billion from 2017. That’s the biggest one-year gain ever, according to Forbes. So, I’m sure Bezos thanks everyone who has ever bought anything via Amazon.
Bill Gates, who has been the richest person in the world for 18 of the past 24 years, drops to No. 2 on the Forbes billionaires list. Gates has a fortune of $90 billion, up from $86 billion last year. This is the biggest gap (in dollars) between the top 2 spots since 2001. Warren Buffett, worth $84 billion, falls to the No. 3 spot. His net worth increased from $75.6 billion in 2017. Bernard Arnault, with a fortune of $72 billion, ascends 7 spots in the ranks to No. 4. Thanks to his $30.5 billion gain in the past year, Arnault is the richest person in Europe for the first time since 2012. Rounding out the top five is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, worth $71 billion. Spanish clothing retailer Amancio Ortega (best known for the Zara fashion chain) in at No. 6, drops out of the top 5 for the first time since 2011. Ortega’s net worth is $70 billion, a $1.3 billion decrease from 2017.
President Donald Trump didn’t fare as well financially during his first year in office. Forbes says his fortune fell by about $400 million to $3.1 billion.
Some other notes from the latest list:
• 2,208 billionaires (up from 2,043 in 2017) made the list, with an average net worth of $4.1 billion, a record high.
• The total combined net worth of this year’s billionaires was $9.1 trillion, up from $7.7 trillion last year.
• 1,490 members are self-made billionaires, up from 1,371 in 2017.
For the complete list www.forbes.com/billionaires.