3 Long Islanders on Forbes 2015 List of the 400 Wealthiest Americans

Forbes has released its annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans and three Long Island residents are among the elite group.

There are a total of 70 New Yorkers on the 2015 Forbes 400 list, where admission starts at a record $1.7 billion, up $150 million from a year ago.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is at the top of the list with a net worth of $76 billion. David Koch, who co-owns Koch Industries with his brother Charles, is worth an estimated $41 billion, good enough to claim the title of richest New Yorker and fifth-richest in the entire nation.

Here are the three Long Island residents on the list with excerpts from Forbes:

No. 32- James Simons, $14 billion, East Setauket

“The “Quant King” retired from his $27 billion hedge fund firm, Renaissance Technologies, in 2010, but at 77 he continues to play a role at the firm and benefit from its funds, particularly the secretive and consistently profitable black-box strategy known as Medallion. The MIT grad started his career as a theoretical mathematician and was a code breaker for the U.S. Department of Defense during the Vietnam War. He later was head of the math department at SUNY-Stony Brook. In 1982 he founded Renaissance, which is based in East Setauket, N.Y. The fund uses computer modeling to find inefficiencies in highly liquid securities. Simons has contributed well over $1 billion to his Simons Foundation, chairs Math for America, and supports autism research.”

No. 114- Charles Dolan & family, $4.9 billion, Oyster Bay

“Charles Dolan agreed to sell his TV company Cablevision to French billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice for $17.7 billion in September 2015 -- the crowning achievement for a guy who got his start cutting sports highlight reels for TV stations around his native Cleveland. Even if the Cablevision deal goes through -- regulators have to approve it -- Dolan will still own Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers and AMC Networks. A Cleveland native, he served in the Air Force and got his start cutting sports highlight reels for local TV stations. He founded the predecessor to HBO in 1965, traded it for a Long Island cable-TV company with just 1,500 subscribers and built it into Cablevision. His brother Larry owns the Cleveland Indians baseball team. Charles chairs the Lustgarten Foundation, the largest private supporter of pancreatic cancer research in the country.”

No. 375- Louis Bacon, $1.8 billion, Oyster Bay

“Louis Bacon’s hedge fund Moore Capital Management had modest gains in the first half of 2015. The firm’s Global Investment Fund returned 4.48%, while its Macro Management Fund realized 3.61% (both net of fees)--weathering the summer storm that hit financial markets pretty well. A noted conservationist, Bacon filed suit in 2014 against fellow billionaire Peter Nygard, his neighbor in the Bahamas, over Nygard’s allegedly illegal expansion of the shoreline on his property and commercialization of the beaches there, which the lawsuit contends has harmed marine habitats.(Nygard denies the claims.) It’s been about a decade of unfriendliness between the two businessmen, and in July 2015, a defamation suit Bacon filed against Nygard had a majority of its claims thrown out by a New York judge because they were made beyond the statute of limitations. Bacon donated $3.5 million to the Harvard Kennedy School in September of 2014 to launch the Louis Bacon Environmental Leadership Program.”

See the full Forbes 400 list here.