6 Billionaire New Jerseyans Make Forbes 400 List

Six New Jerseyans are among the richest people in America. That's according to Forbes, which on Tuesday released its Forbes 400 list of the nation's wealthiest people.

The richest New Jersey resident is Donald Newhouse, who is worth $12.3 billion. Newhouse, a Somerset County resident, inherited the publishing and broadcasting empire Advance Publications decades ago. He was number 38 on the overall Forbes list.

His billionaire brother, Si, died earlier this month.

Other New Jersey residents among the richest in America include:

• John Overdeck (#122 on Forbes list), 47, of Millburn, the co-founder of Two Sigma Investments, a quantitative trading powerhouse with $45 billion under management. He is worth $4.9 billion.
• Rocco Commisso (#150), 67, of Saddle River, the founder and CEO of Mediacom who previously worked as CFO at Cablevision Industries. He is worth $4.5 billion.
• Peter Kellogg, (#219), 75, of Short Hills, who sold brokerage house Spear, Leeds & Kellogg to Goldman Sachs for $6.5 billion in cash and stock in 2000 and later turned his attention to reinsurance outfit IAT, which he led as CEO until 2015 and still chairs. He is worth $3.4 billion.
• Leon G. Cooperman (#248), 74, of Short Hills, who built up Goldman Sachs' asset management division, GSAM, in his quarter-century with the investment bank. He is worth $3.1 billion.
• Larry Robbins (#350), 47, of Alpine who runs Glenview Capital Management, a New York hedge fund that oversees some $11.5 billion. He is worth $2.3 billion.

Not surprisingly, Bill Gates leads the pack as the richest American in 2017. (He's been number one for 24 consecutive years.)

Gates is followed closely by another Seattle-area billionaire, Jeff Bezos.

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. One of the notable names that fell of the list is Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank.

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.

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.

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.

Patch file photo