PA's Richest Person Calls Newtown Square Home: Forbes

NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA – Did you know Pennsylvania's richest person lives right here in Newtown Square?

That's right. According to the Forbes 400 list, Victoria Mars, of Newtown Square, is Pennsylvania's richest person and the nation's 79th richest.

Her net worth is $6.3 billion, according to the list

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' three sisters are also heirs to the company.

Just five Pennsylvanians made the list, all of whom are local to the greater Philadelphia area.

Other locals who are on the Forbes 400 List are:

• Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, of Coatesville, is the largest shareholder of the Campbell Soup Company. She is worth $3.3 billion.
• John Middleton, of Bryn Mawr, made his fortune selling Philip Morris-parent company Altria for $2.9 billion. He is worth $3 billion.
• Michael Rubin, of Bryn Mawr, is the majority owner and CEO of Kynetic (the holding company for e-commerce retailers Fanatics, Rue La La and ShopRunner). He is worth $2.9 billion.
• Jeffrey Lurie, of Wynnewood, is the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. He is worth $2 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.

With reporting from Kara Seymour

Image via Shutterstock