9 Wisconsin Billionaires Make Forbes’ 2018 List

MILWAUKEE, WI — 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. Among the elite club of billionaires on the 32nd annual list,16 of them have Connecticut ties.

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.

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. Forbes explains just how much wealth these billionaires have, being worth a combined $9.1 trillion. 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 Wisconsin billionaires who made the Forbes list for 2018:

#134 John Menard, Jr. $11.5 B John Menard's home improvement store chain has 306 stores and an estimated $9.5 billion in sales. It competes with Home Depot and Lowe's.

#164 Herbert Kohler, Jr. $9.3 B Herbert Kohler Jr. is the executive chairman of Kohler, the Wisconsin-based plumbing fixture manufacturer that bears his family's name.

#334 Diane Hendricks $5.5 B Diane Hendricks chairs ABC Supply, one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing, siding and windows in America.

#514 James Cargill, II. $4.2 B James Cargill is one of 14 billionaire heirs to Cargill, America's largest private company.

#606 H. Fisk Johnson $3.7 B H. Fisk Johnson III is the chairman and CEO of SC Johnson, a privately-held cleaning products company. He is the fifth generation of the Johnson family to lead the company.

#606 Imogene Powers Johnson $3.7 B Imogene Powers Johnson died at the age of 87 in early March 2018. She was the widow of Samuel Johnson Jr. (d. 2004). He ran SC Johnson, the family's cleaning products company, from 1966 to 2000. Her son H. Fisk Johnson is the current chairman and CEO of SC Johnson.

#606 S. Curtis Johnson $3.7 B S. Curtis is a great-great-grandson of Samuel Curtis Johnson, who founded SC Johnson, the family's cleaning products company, in 1886. In 2014, he was sentenced to four months in jail and fined $6,000 after pleading guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault of his stepdaughter.

#606 Helen Johnson-Leipold $3.7 B Helen Johnson-Leipold is an heir to family-owned SC Johnson, the privately-held cleaning products company. Helen is the chairman and CEO of Johnson Outdoors, a publicly-traded company that sells outdoor gear.

#652 Judy Faulkner $3.5 B Judy Faulkner founded America's leading medical-record software provider, Epic, in a Wisconsin basement in 1979. Faulkner, a computer programmer, is still CEO of the $2.5 billion (2016 sales) company.

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.

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