Billionaires Club: 11 From Michigan Make Exclusive Forbes List

Grocery store operators – and brothers – Hank and Doug Meijer made the list. So did Quicken Loans founder and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. Amway founder Richard DeVos and Little Caesars heiress Marian Ilitch are there, too.

They're among the billionaires from Michigan who have been included in the Forbes list of billionaires released Tuesday. At the top of the list is Jeff Bezos, who dethroned fellow Seattle-area billionaire Bill Gates. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has lost the top spot for only the sixth time since 1995. Among the elite club of billionaires on the 32nd annual list, 11 of them have Michigan 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 Michigan billionaires who made the Forbes list for 2018 and their ranking:

• Hank & Doug Meijer, is worth $6.8 billion and ranked No. 242. They are co-chairman of Michigan-based grocery chain Meijer. Hank is also CEO. The brothers took over the family-owned company from their father, Frederik, in 1990.
• Daniel Gilbert, 56, is worth $6.3 billion and ranked No. 274. Gilbert co-founded what would become Quicken Loans, the largest online mortgage lender, in 1985. He sold it to Intuit for $532 million in 1999, but bought it back 3 years later for $64 million. Meanwhile, he has invested $2.5 billion to purchase and rehab a swath of buildings in downtown Detroit.
• Richard DeVos, 92, is worth $5.4 billion and ranked No. 351. He is the cofounder of direct-selling giant Amway. He and his high school friend Jay Van Andel started Amway (short for "American Way") in 1959, selling multipurpose cleaner door-to-door. DeVos retired in 1993.
• Marian Ilitch, 85, is worth $5.2 billion and ranked No. 372. She and her late husband, Mike, built Little Caesars Pizza into a $4 billion chain. She also owns the NHL's Detroit Red Wings and Motor City Casino. Her family is leading development of a $1 billion sports and entertainment district in downtown Detroit.
• Ronda Stryker, 63, is worth $5.1 billion and ranked No. 382. She is a director of Stryker Corp., the medical equipment company founded by her grandfather, Homer Stryker. She inherited a stake in Stryker from her parents and is the only one of her siblings to serve on the board. In 2011, she and her husband gave $100 million to create a new Homer Stryker medical school at Western Michigan University.
• John Brown, 83, is worth $3.3 billion and ranked No. 703. He ran Stryker Corp., a medical device and software company, for 32 years before retiring as chairman in 2009. Stryker's revenues climbed from $17 million to $6.7 billion under Brown's leadership. He led the IPO of Stryker in 1979. Brown is chairman emeritus of Stryker's board and owns slightly more than 5% of the company.
• William Young, 77, is worth $2.2 billion and ranked No. 1103. Young is CEO of $2.7 billion Plastipak, maker of plastic containers. He and his father founded Plastipak in 1967, shortly after he graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy with an engineering degree. After six years of running the business, the duo sold the majority to Beatrice Foods for an undisclosed amount.
• Roger Penske, 81, is worth $1.7 billion and ranked No. 1394. Penski is the founder, chairman and CEO of transportation services company Penske Corp. The business is best known for its auto dealerships and its iconic yellow rental trucks. He started his career with one car dealership in 1965, opened with a $75,000 loan from his father.
• Manuel Moroun, 90, is worth $1.6 billion and ranked No. 1477. Moroun owns Detroit's Ambassador Bridge, the largest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. He also is CEO of holding company CenTra and other family-held transportation and logistics companies. Moroun plans to invest $1 billion on a new span, and is opposing U.S. and Canadian plans for a competing publicly-owned bridge.
• Martha Ford, 92, is worth $1.5 billion and ranked No. 1561. Ford is the widow of William C. Ford, a grandson of Ford Motor founder Henry Ford. Martha Ford's paternal grandparents founded Firestone Tire and Rubber, and she inherited the NFL's Detroit Lions after her husband died in 2014 and she swept out the team's top executives.
• Donald Foss, 73, is worth $1.2 billion and ranked No. 1867. Foss is the founder and former chairman of subprime auto lender Credit Acceptance Corp. He launched the company in 1972 and was one of the first to offer loan programs that help dealers sell cars to customers with poor or no credit.

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.

File photo by the Associated Press