Seven from Westchester County Make 'Forbes 400'

Written by Barbara Heins

The annual Forbes 400 list is out and there aren’t too many surprises — Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison are at the top of the country’s billionaire heap.

From Westchester County, seven also made the list, led by hedge fund pioneer George Soros of Katonah, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, at no. 17. His listed net worth is $24 billion.

According to Forbes, which has been compiling the list since 1982, the stock market is the reason why the rich “just keep getting richer.” Forbes reports that in order to make the magazine’s Top 400 list, one’s net worth had to be $1.55 billion, up from $1.3 million in 2013. Given the level of the bottom rung of the list, Forbes reports that 113 billionaires “didn’t make the cut.” The aggregate wealth of the Top 400 list stands at a commanding $2.3 trillion.

In Westchester, the other six billionaires to make the cut are:

#153 - Daniel Och of Scarsdale, Chairman and CEO of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, $3.6 billion

#201 - David Rockefeller Sr. of Sleepy Hollow, philanthropist, $3 billion

#321 - David Gottesman of Rye, CEO of First Manhattan Co., $2.1 billion

#355 - David Einhorn (whose residence is simply listed as Westchester County), founder and President of Greenlight Capital, $1.82 billion

#362 - Nelson Peltz of Bedford, founder of Trian Fund Management, $1.78 billion

#370 - Thomas Secunda of Croton-on-Hudson, Bloomberg executive, $1.73 billion

Photo: George Soros. Patch file photo

Patch Editor Alfred Branch contributed to this report.