9 Georgia Billionaires Make Forbes 400 List For 2017

ATLANTA, GA — Forbes magazine has released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans, and nine billionaires from Georgia made the list — an increase of one from a year ago. Forbes noted that the price of admission to the list jumped nearly 18 percent to $2 billion. There were 26 billionaires on the 2016 list who fell off, and 22 newcomers made the list for the first time.

While the usual tycoons — leaders at Cox Media, Home Depot and Chick-Fil-A among them — are still on the list and gained wealth, the newcomer to the exclusive club didn't finish high school or attend college. David Zalik started his first business at age 14, buying computer parts and assembling them himself, says Forbes. He's now worth $2 billion.

Bill Gates leads the pack as the richest American in 2017, followed closely by another Seattle-area billionaire, Jeff Bezos. Though the Amazon CEO came in at second place on the Forbes 400 list released Tuesday, Bezos did for a brief few hours have the distinction of being richer than Gates over the summer thanks to a surge in Amazon stock. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

Watch: The 10 States With The Most Millionaires

One of the notable losers on the list was President Donald Trump, Forbes says. According to Forbes, Trump’s fortune fell $600 million to $3.1 billion. Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross fell off the list altogether when he filed disclosure forms showing he had a net worth of less than $1 billion. Another notable bumped from the exclusive list is Kevin Plank of Maryland founder and CEO of sport apparel maker Under Armour, whose net worth has slumped from $3 billion a year ago to $1.7 billion.

Here is where Georgia’s billionaires land on the list.

• No. 39 Jim Kennedy ($12 billion). Kennedy, chairman of Cox Enterprises, is Georgia's richest person, according to Forbes. He is the grandson of company founder James M. Cox. Cox Enterprises is a media company and its holdings include the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Kelley Blue Book.
• No. 144 (tie) Bubba Cathy ($4.6 billion). Cathy is senior vice president of Chick-Fil-A. His father, Truett Cathy, who founded the fast-food chain near Atlanta in 1967, died in 2014.
• No. 144 (tie) Dan Cathy ($4.6 billion). Tied with his brother, Dan Cathy is chairman and CEO of Chick-Fil-A.
• No. 144 (tie) Gary Rollins ($4.6 billion). Rollins is CEO of Rollins Inc., the parent company of Orkin pest control. It's the biggest pest control business, by volume, in the United States, Forbes says.
• No. 144 (tie) Randall Rollins ($4.6 billion). The chairman of the company, Randall is tied with his brother at the same spot. In his 80s, he is said to still work six days a week.
• No. 150 Bernard Marcus ($4.5 billion). Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus and co-worker Arthur Blank (whom we'll hear about shortly) started their own hardware store after being fired from rival Handy Dan in 1978. Marcus is the chief benefactor behind the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.
• No. 186 Arthur Blank ($3.8 billion). One of the most well-known members of Georgia's Billionaire Club, Blank parlayed his Home Depot fortune into owning the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC, the Major League Soccer team.
• No. 359 Ted Turner ($2.2 billion). Georgia's "Captain Outrageous" is America's second-largest individual landowner, according to Forbes. He owns roughly 2 million acres of land in the United States, with more in Argentina, and the world's largest bison herd.
• No. 388 David Zalik ($2 billion). The co-founder and CEO of fintech unicorn GreenSky, his company facilitates billions in loans for home improvement projects via a network of 14,000 contractors. Zalik immigrated to the U.S. from Israel when he was four.

According to Forbes, these are the 10 richest Americans in 2017:

Bill Gates, net worth $89 billion, Microsoft (1)

Jeff Bezos, net worth $81.5 billion, Amazon (2)

Warren Buffett, net worth $78 billion, Berkshire Hathaway (3)

Mark Zuckerberg, net worth $71 billion, Facebook (4)

Larry Ellison, net worth $59 billion, software (5)

Charles Koch, net worth $48.5 billion, diversified (6)

David Koch, net worth $48.5 billion, diversified (6)

Michael Bloomberg, net worth $46.8 billion, Bloomberg LP (8)

Larry Page, net worth $44.6 billion, Google (9)

Sergey Brin, net worth $43.4 billion, Google (10)

>>> Click here to see the full list.

To come up with the rankings of the 400 richest Americans, Forbes journalists started with a list of about 600 people considered strong candidates. Forbes looked at public records, news stories and when possible interviewed the candidates in person or via phone. All types of assets were taken into account, and Forbes also factored in debt.

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