Southwest Florida still home to six of the world's richest billionaires

Naples

Six of the richest people in the world still call Southwest Florida home.

The 2018 Forbes list of billionaires released Tuesday includes the same residents who were on the list a year ago. Some moved up, while others moved down the list.

Two of the six residents listed this year are also among the Top 10 richest billionaires in Florida: Shahid Khan and Reinhold Schmieding.

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2017 video: 6 Southwest Florida residents among world's billionaires

According to the list:

Khan, 67, of Naples, once again ranks as the richest man in Southwest Florida. At No. 217, his net worth is valued at $7.2 billion. He fell from No. 158 in 2017, when he had a value of $8.2 billion. An engineer by trade, he owns auto parts supplier Flex-N-Gate, the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars and the United Kingdom's Fulham football club. His 300-foot super yacht Kismet, which took six years to build, was delivered at the end of 2014.
Schmieding, 63, weighing in at No. 404, is still the region's second-richest businessman. The Naples resident dropped more than 10 spots from last year, but his worth has climbed once again, from $4.4 billion in 2017 to $4.9 billion in 2018. The Michigan native founded Arthrex, an orthopedic surgical tools company, in 1981 in Munich, Germany. His company, now headquartered in North Naples, has developed more than 11,000 products used in shoulder, hip and other joint surgeries.

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Here's a look at the other locals who landed on this year's billionaires list and a little more about them, according to Forbes.

Richard Schulze, 77, who lives in Bonita Springs, has risen to No. 550 with a worth of $4 billion. He was at No. 603 last year, with a value of $3.2 billion. He founded Sound of Music in 1966, which eventually became the chain of stores known as Best Buy. He served as Best Buy's CEO from 1983 to 2002 and stepped down as chairman in 2012. He rejoined the company as chairman emeritus in 2013 after his attempts to take over the electronics retailer and make it private failed.

Tom Golisano, 76, of Naples, dropped to No. 729, despite having a higher net worth of $3.2 billion in 2018. Last year he landed at No. 660, with a value of $3 billion. He founded payroll firm Paychex, a publicly traded company, "with just $3,000 and a credit card." He served as CEO until 2004 and remains chairman. A former New York resident, he sold the Buffalo Sabres in March 2011 for $189 million, rejecting a higher bid to keep the team from moving out of the city.
With a net worth of $2.1 billion, Catherine Lozick, 73, has risen a few spots. She's at 1,157, up from No. 1,161 in 2017. Last year she was valued at $1.8 billion. Still the only woman to make the list in Southwest Florida, she inherited an estimated 65 percent stake in Swagelok, a valve-making business her father co-founded in 1947 with a $500 loan. Her father left his son John Lennon a much smaller inheritance, and as a result Lennon sued Lozick and her trustees in 2002, revealing details about the family's finances. Lozick settled the suit by paying Lennon's grandchildren "an additional $1.25 million."`
Naples resident William Stone, 62, has moved up on the list too, settling at No. 1,339, with a value of $1.8 billion. Last year he stood at No. 1,567, with a net worth of $1.3 billion. The Indiana native started SS&C Technologies in 1986 "with the $20,000 he had saved from his days as a KPMG executive." He took the company public in 1996. After the dot-com crash nearly crippled the company, he added services, including data centers, then took the company private in 2005. In 2011 the company went public again. Stone remains the firm's largest individual shareholder.

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, took the top spot in the world on the billionaire's list this year — a first. He unseated Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has reigned as the richest person in the world for 18 of the past 24 years.

Bezos has a fortune of $112 billion, up nearly $40 billion from 2017, which is the biggest one-year gain ever, according to Forbes.

Gates now has a net worth of $90 billion, up from $86 billion last year.

The gap between the top two spots is the largest it has been since 2001.

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Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chairman and CEO, took the third spot, with a worth of $84 billion.

The 2018 list has 2,208 billionaires, up from 2,043 in 2017. The average net worth this year is $4.1 billion, a record high.

The worth of all of this year's billionaires totals $9.1 trillion. That compares with $7.7 trillion in 2017.

Nearly 1,500 billionaires on the 2018 list are self-made, compared with less than 1,400 last year.

Top 10

Here are the top 10 billionaires in Florida, according to Forbes:

Name Rank Net worth City

Thomas Peterffy 47 $20.3 billion Palm Beach

David Tepper 138 $11 billion Miami Beach

Micky Arison 154 $9.7 billion Bal Harbour

Shahid Khan 217 $7.2 billion Naples

Charles Johnson 321 $5.6 billion Palm Beach

Robert Rich Jr. 372 $5.2 billion Islamorada

Reinhold Schmieding 404 $4.9 billion Naples

Dirk Ziff 422 $4.8 billion North Palm Beach

J. Christopher Reyes 441 $4.7 billion Hobe Sound

Jude Reyes 441 $4.7 billion Palm Beach

Source: Forbes Annual World's Billionaires List, 2018