Meet The Billionaires Club in Maryland

»Photo: Kevin Plank of Under Armour and Steve Bisciotti of the Baltimore Ravens.

Forbes magazine released its 30th annual list of billionaires and Maryland is again among the top of the financial heap when it comes to the number of billionaires living in the state.

There are nine billionaires who call Maryland home. The names include sports business owners – Steve Bisciotti, Dan Snyder and Kevin Plank – and investors like Mitchell and Steven Rales.

According to Forbes, “For our 30th annual guide to the world’s richest, we found 1,810 billionaires, down from a record 1,826 a year ago. Their aggregate net worth was $6.48 trillion, $570 billion less than last year. It was also the first time since 2010 that the average net worth of a billionaire dropped – it is now $3.6 billion, $300 million less than last year.”

So how does Maryland fare in all this worldly wealth?

Here’s the breakdown:

• Ted Lerner of Chevy Chase, developer and founder of Lerner Enterprises and Washington Nationals owner, is the richest man in Maryland. He is No. 233 on the Forbes list with a net worth of $5.5 billion. 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. The Lerners are on the short list of developers vying to build a new headquarters for the FBI.

• Mitchell Rales of Potomac, co-founder of Danaher investment firm, is No. 477. Net worth: $3.4 billion. Three decades after building Danaher Corp. into an industrial conglomerate, Steven Rales and his brother, Mitchell, plan to break their empire into two halves: one part devoted to science and technology, the other focusing on traditional manufacturing. The split is set to occur in late 2016. The Rales brothers started building what would become Danaher in the 1980s, buying up companies quickly. Taking what they learned at their dad's real estate company, they jumped into the takeover game by focusing on tax avoidance and cash flow. All told, they acquired more than three dozen companies, allowing Danaher to become a massive, if unstylish, firm with $20 billion in revenue.

• Steven Rales of Montgomery County, of Danaher investment firm, is No. 435. Net worth: $3.6 billion. With his brother Mitchell, acquired their first company in 1981, a vinyl-siding manufacturer called Master Shield. It threw off enough cash to finance further acquisitions. One, in 1983, was a crippled REIT they renamed Danaher after a Montana stream where they once fished for trout. The brothers merged their profitable acquisitions into the loss-making REIT, using it as a shield against taxes. Their success allowed Steven to pursue an interest in movie-making; his film-production company Indian Paintbrush has backed flicks like Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel."

• Kevin Plank of Lutherville, founder and CEO of Under Armour, is No. 527. Net worth: $3.2 billion. Under Armour founder Kevin Plank made his billions as the underdog competitor to Nike and he's now bringing the heat to Silicon Valley, spending $710 million last year to buy a trio of health and fitness tracking apps, including calorie counting app MyFitnessPal. His goal: create the world's best digital health platform to rival Google, Apple, Jawbone and Fitbit. 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.

• Stephen Bisciotti of Millersville, co-founder of Allegis staffing company and owner of the Baltimore Ravens, is No. 569. Net worth: $3 billion. Bisciotti worked in the temporary help industry before cofounding his own staffing firm at age 23. He 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. The company does more than $10 billion in revenues and processes 8 million paychecks every year.

• Bernard Saul II of Chevy Chase, chairman and CEO of Saul Centers Inc., is No. 612. Net worth: $2.8 billion. Saul inherited a company and created several others. He started with his grandfather's Washington, D.C.-based real estate company. In 1964, he started the B.F. Saul real estate investment trust. Five years later, 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 still exists and is publicly traded. The firm has 9.3 million square feet of real estate, mostly shopping centers and office properties in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

• David Rubenstein of Bethesda, co-chief executive officer and co-founder, Carlyle Group, is No. 810. Net worth: $2.2 billion. Rubenstein 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. Rubenstein got his start as a Carter Administration official. He cofounded Carlyle in 1987; he raised the money and managed its stable of advisers, which has included George H.W. Bush and ex-British prime minister John Major.

• Dan Snyder of Potomac, owner of the Washington Redskins, is No. 854. Net worth: $2.1 billion. A lifelong Redskins fan, Snyder bought the NFL team for $800 million after Jack Kent Cooke’s death in 1997. The Redskins are the third-most valuable team in the league, worth $2.85 billion, thanks to a wealthy and passionate fan base, NFL TV deals and a $205 million stadium naming rights agreement with FedEx. Snyder made his first fortune in marketing, when his fledgling company 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, mansions in Maryland and Colorado, multiple planes and a 224-foot yacht.

• Jim Davis of Cockeysville, co-founder and now head of Allegis, a staffing company, is No. 1,476. Net worth: $1.2 billion. Davis is the chairman of staffing firm Allegis Group, which 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. Renamed Allegis Group in 1998, the now $10 billion (revenues) company places 11,000 contract employees in jobs every week and processes 8 million paychecks annually. Davis bought in as a minority partner of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in 2010.