Business & Tech

Guess Who The Richest Person In Brentwood Is

The price of admission on the annual Forbes 400 list was $2 billion and one Brentwood man made the cut.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Forbes magazine has released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans, and 12 men from Los Angeles are on the list including Brenwtood's own Rick Caruso who made his fortune in real estate.

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.

While the usual tycoons — leaders at Facebook, Google, Tesla, eBay, Snapchat among them — are still on the list and gained wealth, one newcomer to the exclusive club didn't finish high school or attend college. David Zalik started his first business at age 14, buying computer parts and assembling them himself, says Forbes. He's now worth $2 billion.

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Bill Gates leads the pack as the richest American in 2017, followed closely by another Seattle-area billionaire, Jeff Bezos. Though the Amazon CEO came in at second place on the Forbes 400 list released Tuesday, Bezos did for a brief few hours have the distinction of being richer than Gates over the summer thanks to a surge in Amazon stock. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

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. Another notable bumped from the exclusive list is Kevin Plank of Maryland founder and CEO of sport apparel maker Under Armour, whose net worth has slumped from $3 billion a year ago to $1.7 billion.

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Here is where LA’s billionaires land on the list:

  • #21 Elon Musk, $20.8 B, Age 46, Tesla Motors
  • #55, Patrick Soon-Shiong, $8.3 B, Age 65, pharmaceuticals
  • #71, Eli Broad, $7.3 B Age, 84, investments
  • #97, Edward Roski, Jr., $5.5 B, Age 78, real estate
  • #179, Rick Caruso $3.9 B, Age 58, Brentwood, real estate
  • #200, Michael Milken, $3.7 B, Age 71, investments
  • #206 Steven Spielberg $3.6 B 70 Pacific Palisades, Movies
  • #219, Anthony Pritzker, $3.4 B, Age 56, hotels, investments
  • #248, Evan Spiegel, $3.1 B, Age 27, Snapchat
  • #248, Bobby Murphy $3.1 B, Age 29 Venice, Snapchat
  • #315, Sean Parker, $2.6 B, Age 37, Facebook
  • #374, Bruce Karsh, $2.1 B, Age 62, private equity

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.

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.

By Deb Belt (Patch National Staff) and Patch Staffer Paige Austin »Photo via Shutterstock

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