Newtown Square Billionaire Makes Forbes' 2018 List

NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA – Forbes recently released its list of 2018 billionaires, and Pennsylvania has a few residents on the new list. Among PA's notable billionaires is a Newtown Square resident and chances are you've had some her company's products.

The top Pennsylvanian on the elite list is candy company heir Victoria Mars. She's worth $5.9 billion, Forbes estimates.

Mars, as you may already know and may have guessed, is one of the heirs to the Mars Inc. candy and pet food company and is the company's Board of Directors Chairman.

Based in Virginia, Mars Inc. is know for iconic candies such as Twix, 3 Musketeers, Skittles, Milky Way, and many more.

Mars, a Wharton School of Business grad, inherited a roughly 8 percent stake in the company when her father, Forrest Mars Jr., died in 2016, Forbes reports.

Mars Inc. was founded in 1911 in Newark, New Jersey by her great-grandfather Franklin Clarence Mars. In 2014, the company reported $33 billion in sales.

Mars, 61, is ranked 296th on Forbes' list.

The 2018 list has 2,208 members from 72 countries. With 585 Americans on the list, the United States leads the way with the most number of billionaires in the world, followed by China with 373 billionaires. The U.S. also had 18 newcomers featured on the 2018 list.

Jeff Bezos is at the top of Forbes' billionaires list for 2018, dethroning fellow Seattle-area billionaire Bill Gates, who has lost the top spot for only the sixth time since 1995. According to Forbes, Bezos is the first centi-billionaire at the top of the list, meaning he has a fortune of over a $100 billion.

The top 20 people on the list alone are worth $1.2 trillion, 13 percent of the total fortune of all billionaires worldwide.

Here are the Pennsylvania billionaires who made the Forbes list for 2018:

• Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, 68, is worth $3.3 billion and is ranked 703rd on the list. She is the largest shareholder of the Campbell Soup Company. Her grandfather is credited with inventing the condensed-soup formula that transformed the company in 1897.
• John Middleton, 63, is worth $3 billion and is ranked 791st (in a tie) on the list. He sold his family's tobacco business for $2.9 billion in 2007.
• Michael Rubin, 45, is also worth $3 billion and tied with Middleton for 791st on the list. Rubin is the CEO of Kynetic, the holding company for e-commerce retailers Fanatics, Rue La La and ShopRunner.
• Thomas Hagen, 82, is worth $2 billion and is ranked 1,215th (tie) on the list. He is chairman of Erie Indemnity.
• Jeffrey Lurie, 66, is also worth $2 billion, tying with Hagen. He is the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles.
• Brian Roberts, 58, is worth $1.8 billion and is ranked 1,339th on the list. He is CEO and largest individual shareholder of Comcast.
• Richard Hayne, 70, is worth $1.5 million and is ranked 1,561st on the list. He is chairman, president and CEO of Urban Outfitters.
• Richard Yuengling Jr, 74, is worth $1.4 billion and is ranked 1,650th on the list. He is the fifth-generation owner of D.G. Yuengling & Son and is credited with turning his family's struggling brewery into one of America's largest beer makers, Forbes says.
• Alfred West Jr, 75, is worth $1.2 billion and is ranked 1,867th on the list. He is the founder of SEI financial services.

The top 10 billionaires on the list are:

• Jeff Bezos, 54, worth $112 billion
• Bill Gates, 62, worth $90 billion
• Warren Buffett, 87, worth $84 billion
• Bernard Arnault, 69, worth $72 billion
• Mark Zuckerberg, 33, worth $71 billion
• Amancio Ortega, 81, worth $70 billion
• Carlos Slim Helu, 78, worth $67.1 billion
• Charles Koch, 82, worth $60 billion
• David Koch, 77, worth $60 billion
• Larry Ellison, 73, worth $58.5 billion

The Forbes billionaires list provides a look at wealth using stock prices and exchange rates from Feb. 9, 2018. Forbes values assets like private companies, art, real estate and more.

Read more about Forbes methodology here.

See the full list of billionaires here.

With reporting from Kara Seymour

Image via Shutterstock