Southwest Florida is home to six of the richest people on earth.
That's according to Forbes' annual list of billionaires, released Tuesday.
While the coronavirus has tanked many fortunes, fivebillionaires from Naples and one from Bonita Springs made the elitelistbased on where their fortunes stood March 18, when Forbes finalized its rankings for 2020.
Most of the locals on the list likely sound familiar because they're well-known and they've been on the listmany times,including in 2019.
There's one new arrival: Scott Kapnick, 61, of Naples, a self-made billionaire who ranks at No. 1,513 this year, making him the fifth wealthiest billionaire in Southwest Florida.
According to Forbes, Kapnick,founder and CEO of HPSInvestmentPartners, one of the world's biggest alternative credit managers with $60 billion in assets, spent more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to become co-head ofinvestment and banking and co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International.
For the rankings, his net worth was estimated at $1.4 billion.
Some of the locals on this year's list are worth more than they were a year ago, while others have lost some ground.
The richest guy in Southwest Florida? That's the same:Shahid Khan, 69, a Naples resident, who weighs in at No. 183 this year.
For the rankings, Khan's net worth was estimated at $7.8billion — up nearly 15% from a year ago. On Tuesday, Forbes valued him at more — $8.8 billion.
According to Forbes: An engineer by trade,Khanowns auto parts supplier Flex-N-Gate,the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars and the United Kingdom's Fulham football club. He took delivery of his 300-foot super yacht Kismet, which took sixyears to build,at the end of 2014.
The basis for Khan's success:A one-piece truck bumper.
Khan's latest venture? Forbes reports that he and his son, Tony, launched All Elite Wrestling, a competitor to WWE, earlier this year.
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Sitting at No. 308 on this year's list, the very private Reinhold Schmieding, 65,remains thesecond-richest businessman in Southwest Florida, with a net worth of $5.3 billion when Forbes determined its rankings.
On Tuesday, Forbes put Schmieding's "real time" net worthat $6.1 billion. That's up from the $6 billion estimate it used to determine his ranking last year.
In 1981, Schmieding, a Naples resident and Michigan native, foundedArthrex, an orthopedic surgical tools company, in Munich, Germany. His company, now headquartered in North Naples, has developed thousands of products used in shoulder, hip and other joint surgeries.
Arthrex has made aname for itself in the field of arthroscopy internationally, designing, developingand manufacturing devices for minimally invasive orthopedic surgery, with more than 1,500 patents, or patents pending. The company continues to expand its footprint inSouthwest Florida and elsewhere to meet the growing demand for its innovative products.
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According to Forbes, privately-held Arthrex has estimated annual revenues of $2.1 billion and Schmieding — the son of German immigrants — owns more than 90% of the company.
A fun fact listed by Forbes?Arthrex'slogo, an "X" formed by a tiny arthroscope and a grasper, was originally sketched by Schmieding.
This year'slist of billionaires also includes these well-known locals in the order of their rankings:
Richard Schulze, 79, sits at No. 565, with a net worth of $3.4 billion, down from $3.7 billion last year.
The Bonita Springs residentfounded Sound of Music in 1966, which eventually became the chain of superstores known asBest 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 2013after his attempts to take over the electronics retailer and make it private failed.
Other tidbits from Forbes? Schulze is Best Buy's largest individual shareholder with a 12% stake and he plans to give away $1 billion of his fortune over his lifetime, through his family foundation.
Tom Golisano, 78, ranks at No. 616, with a net worth of $3.2 billion, down from $3.8 billion last year.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 town.
He recently published a book"Built Not Born: A Self-Made Billionaire's No-Nonsense Guide for Entrepreneurs."
"The subject matter is so close to what I almost live every day," he said via phone in a recent interview with the Daily News. "It didn't take a lot of time."
While the book is a first for Golisano, he said it likely won't be his last.
He wrote the guide bookin part because he hopes to publish a biography of his life and his publisher recommended he try his hand at a business book first. Released Feb. 11 by Harper Collins, it quickly became the top-selling business book through Barnes & Noble in its first week.
Naples billionaire William Stone ranks at No. 1,613, with a net worth of $1.3 billion, down from $1.9 billion a year ago.
Stone, 64,started SS&C Technologies, a financial software firm, in 1986,"with the $20,000 he had saved from his days as a KPMG executive," according to Forbes.
After guiding thefirm to an IPO in 1996, Forbes reports the dot-com crash nearly crippled the company in 2001, but Stone kept it alive by refocusing and adding services, such as data centers.
In 2005, he took the company private, but in 2011 it went public again.
According to Forbes, Stone remains the firm's largest individual shareholder, with a 13% stake.
The 2020 list includes58 billionaires from Florida. At the top of the list in Florida are Thomas Peterffy, founder of the InteractiveBrokers onlinetrading platform, worth $14.3 billion, andDavid Tepper,the North Carolina Panthers’ owner, worth $12 billion.
Khan is the third richest man in the state.
According to Forbes, some of the billionaires on this year's list are "serving as agents of change and taking action to reinvent their businesses to aid in the global response to the coronavirus outbreak," including Tepper who had donated more than $2.6 million to support COVID-19 efforts across the Carolinas and Micky Arison, owner of the Miami Heat and chairman of Carnival Corp., who has donated $1 millionto a fund to help employees and other community members impacted by the crisis.
There are 2,095 billionaires on the 2020 list, down from 2,153 last year. In total, their combined net worthis $8 trillion, compared to $8.7 trillion in 2019.
More than 260 names dropped off this year’s list and a record 1,062 people on the listhave seen a drop in their fortunes, a reflection of both turbulent markets and the coronavirus pandemic, according to Forbes.
“The world’s richest are not immune to the devastating impact of the coronavirus,” saidKerry A. Dolan, Forbes' assistant managing editor of wealth. “The drop in the number of billionaires this year reflects the economic impact the pandemic is already having.”
No surprise, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos still ranks No. 1 this year—for the third year in a row, despite his net worth plunging by $18 billion.
Bezos is valued at $113 billion, down from $131 billion last year. Forbes attributed the decrease primarily to his recent divorce.
Bill Gatesremains at No. 2,with a fortune of $98 billion.
The 2020 listincludes 278 newcomers from 20 countries, including Zoom Video Communications’ founder and CEO Eric Yuan, whose video conferencing service platform, headquartered in California, is booming amid the spread of the coronavirus, which has forced so many employees to shelter in place and work from home across the globe.
The United States is still home to themost billionaires, with 614, followed by China, with 456.
