8 Billionaires In Maryland Make Forbes 2019 List

MARYLAND — Jeff Bezos is at the top of Forbes' billionaires list for 2019, his second year atop the famed ranking since dethroning fellow Seattle-area billionaire Bill Gates. Among the elite club of billionaires on the 32nd annual list, eight of them have Maryland ties.

Here are the Maryland billionaires who made the Forbes list for 2019:

• Ted Lerner, 93, is worth $4.9 billion and is ranked No. 365 on the list. Lerner of Chevy Chase, developer and founder of Lerner Enterprises and Washington Nationals owner, is the richest man in Maryland. In 1952 Lerner borrowed $250 from his wife to start a real estate company, selling homes for developers. Now he owns 20 million square feet of commercial and retail space, plus hotels, and 7,000 apartments.
• Stephen Bisciotti, 58, is worth $4.2 billion and is ranked No. 472 on the list. Bisciotti of Millersville is co-founder of Allegis staffing company and owner of the Baltimore Ravens. Bisciotti and his cousin, Jim Davis, (who is also a billionaire), started what would become Allegis Group -- now one of the world's biggest staffing companies -- in 1983. Originally called Aerotek and focused on filling aeronautics, engineering and light industrial jobs, today Allegis Group places people in sectors spanning from IT to finance.
• Mitchell Rales, 62, is worth $3.6 billion and is ranked No. 597 on the list. Rales of Potomac is co-founder of Danaher investment firm. Three decades after building Danaher Corp. into an industrial conglomerate, Steven Rales and his brother, Mitchell, broke their empire into two halves: one part devoted to science and technology, in late 2016.
• Bernard Saul II, 86, is worth $3.6 billion and is ranked No. 597 on the list. Saul of Chevy Chase is chairman and CEO of Saul Centers Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate company. Within a few years he expanded from real estate to banking, developing the plans for what became Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank, which he sold to Capital One for $476 million in 2009. In the 1990s he founded another REIT, Saul Centers, which owns real estate, mostly shopping centers and office properties in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
• Jim Davis, 58, is worth $2.8 billion and ranks at No. 804 on the list. Davis of Cockeysville, co-founder and now head of Allegis, a staffing company he co-founded with cousin and business partner Stephen Bisciotti in 1983. The company was originally called Aerotek, and it matched job seekers with aeronautics, engineering and light industrial jobs. Davis bought in as a minority partner of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in 2010.
• David Rubenstein, 69, is worth $2.7 billion and is tied at No. 838 on the list. Rubenstein of Bethesda, is co-chief executive officer and co-founder, Carlyle Group. He is donating nearly $19 million to restore the Lincoln Memorial and expand exhibits and research there. In all, he's given $44 million toward historic preservation of U.S. attractions, including the Washington Monument. He has funded panda procreation at the National Zoo.
• Dan Snyder, 54, is worth $2.2 billion and is ranked No. 1057 on the Forbes list. Snyder of Potomac, is owner of the Washington Redskins, which he bought for $800 million after Jack Kent Cooke's death in 1997. Snyder made his first fortune in marketing, when Snyder Communications sold advertisements placed on boards inside of buildings, and distributed product samples. The firm went public in 1996, making Snyder, then 32, the youngest CEO on the New York Stock Exchange. He also owns private equity firm Red Zone Capital.
• Kevin Plank, 46, is worth $1.9 billion and is ranked No. 1227 on the list. Plank of Lutherville, the founder and CEO of Under Armour, made his billions as the underdog competitor to Nike and in recent years has spent hundreds of millions to buy health and fitness tracking apps, including calorie counting app MyFitnessPal. While he was a University of Maryland football player, he noticed his teammates were all wearing heavy, sweat-soaked shirts. So he came up with a lightweight, sweat-wicking shirt using fabrics from women's undergarments. After graduating in 1996, he started selling the shirts from the basement of his deceased grandmother's house. Under Armour is now America's second biggest sportswear vendor behind Nike.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth about $131 billion, topped the list for the second year in a row, followed by software magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates ($96.5 billion) and Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett ($82.5 billion).

Both the number of billionaires and their combined net worth is down this year, according to Forbes. Last year, 2,208 people made the list and had a combined wealth of $9.1 trillion. Forbes said this represents the first decrease in billionaires and their combined wealth since 2016, and only the second decrease in a decade.

A record 994 billionaires are worth less than they were a year ago, but last year, only 360 members of the elite class got poorer. The average net worth of this year’s billionaires is $4 billion, down from $4.1 billion in 2018. Of the total, 1,450 members are self-made.

“The billionaire ranks prove that even the world’s richest are not immune to economic forces and the volatility of world markets. Yet, even with strong headwinds, resourceful and relentless entrepreneurs find new ways to get rich,” Luisa Kroll, assistant managing editor of wealth at Forbes said in a news release.

Kerry A. Dolan, also an assistant managing editor of wealth at Forbes, noted regional trends.

“Of note this year was the large number of drop-offs in China, and the weakening of the euro vs. the dollar, which pushed down the dollar value of European fortunes,” Dolan said in the release.

In the United States, Bezos’ net worth increased from $19 billion, and Gates, who had been the wealthiest person in the world for the longest period of time, increased his fortune by $6.5 billion, from $90 billion in 2018. The gap between the No. 1 and No. 2 billionaires grew due to an increase in Amazon stock prices. Buffett’s net worth fell by $1.5 billion.

Rounding out the top five were Bernard Arnault of France and Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, with net worths of $76 billion and $64 billion, respectively.

New to the list is Kylie Jenner, 21, who is the youngest billionaire in the world and the youngest self-made billionaire of all time. Jenner, who ranked 2,057 on the list, owns 100 percent of Kylie Cosmetics, a company she founded three years ago and which did $360 million in sales last year. Most of the company’s revenue comes from e-commerce, but Kylie Cosmetics also has a deal with Ulta to put its products in the makeup retailer’s 1,163 U.S. stores.

Other Americans in the Top 20 were:

• Larry Ellison, software magnate, No. 7 with a net worth of $62.5 billion (up from 2018);
• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, No 8, with a net worth of $62.3 billion (down from 2018);
• Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg LP, No. 9, with a net worth of $55.5 billion (up from 2018);
• Larry Page, Google, No. 10, with a net worth of $50.8 billion (up from 2018);
• Charles Koch and David Koch, Koch Industries, No. 11, with a net worth of $50.5 billion (down from 2018);
• Sergey Brin, Google, No. 14, with a net worth of $49.8 billion (up from 2018);
• Jim Walton, Walmart, No. 16, with a net worth of $44.6 billion (down from 2018);
• Alice Walton, Walmart, No. 17, with a net worth of $44.4 billion (down from 2018);
• S. Robson Walton, Walmart, No 18, with a net worth of $44.3 billion (down from 2018);
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, No. 19, with a net worth of $41.2 billion (up from 2018).

The Top 20 billionaires have a combined net worth of $1.2 trillion, which is unchanged from last year. Their aggregate wealth represents about 14 percent of all billionaires. The minimum net worth in the Top 20 was $3.38 billion, $200 million less than 2018.

Go here to view the complete list.

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