Philadelphia Resident Among America's Richest: Forbes

PHILADELPHIA — America’s richest keep getting richer. The wealthiest Americans on the annual Forbes 400 list grew their combined net worth by just over 2 percent from the previous year, making them worth $2.96 trillion in 2019.

Among those wealthy Americans is a Philadelphia resident.

Victoria Mars, 62, is worth $7.4 billion, Forbes said.

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.

Five other Pennsylvanians made Forbes list. See them here.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, is once again at the top of the list. His ex-wife, Mackenzie Bezos, who got 25 percent of the couple’s shares in Amazon as part of their divorce settlement, is now the 15th richest person in America, according to the list.

According to Forbes, the minimum net worth to qualify for the list is $2.1 billion. The average wealth of those on the list increased by $200 million to $7.4 billion, Forbes writes.

With the vast amounts of wealth in the pockets of those on the exclusive list, Forbes notes that a number of high-profile billionaires such as Kylie Jenner and Michael Jordan, didn’t even make the list.

The top 10 richest people in America for 2019 are:

• Jeff Bezos: $114 billion
• Bill Gates: $106 billion
• Warren Buffett: $80.8 billion
• Mark Zuckerberg: $69.6 billion
• Larry Ellison: $65 billion
• Larry Page: $55.5 billion
• Sergey Brin: $53.5 billion
• Michael Bloomberg: $53.4 billion
• Steve Ballmer: $51.7 billion
• Jim Walton: $51.6 billion

See the full list and read more via Forbes.