RI’s billionaire Nelson falls on Forbes list after $200M decrease

March 5th, 2013 at 2:07 pm by under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site

Rhode Island’s billionaire isn’t quite as wealthy today as he was last fall.

Financier Jonathan Nelson is once again the only Rhode Islander on Forbes’ list of the world’s 1,426 billionaires. His net worth of $1.5 billion puts him at #974, placing him among the poorest third of people with 10-figure fortunes. A year ago he was #854.

Nelson, founder and CEO of the powerhouse private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners, had seen his fortune inch up to $1.7 billion as of September but it’s now back to $1.5 billion, according to Forbes. It peaked at $2 billion before the market crash of 2008, then dipped to a low of $1.35 billion in September 2010.

Nelson, 56, was raised in Providence by an orthodontist, graduated from Brown in 1977 and founded ProvEq in 1989. He and his wife own a $1.5 million home on Providence’s East Side but mostly stay out of the local limelight, though they’ve been generous to Brown and he sits on the board for Newport’s jazz and folk festivals.

Another Rhode Islander who used to be among Forbes’ billionaires – Hope Hill “Happy” van Beuren, the Campbell’s Soup heiress who lives in Middletown – hasn’t appeared on any of its wealth rankings since March 2011 because her fortune is shared by her family. She chairs the van Beuren Charitable Foundation.

A part-time Rhode Islander on the list is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who owns Beechwood Mansion in Newport. Ellison’s net worth of $43 billion makes him the fifth-richest man in the world, behind only Mexico’s Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Spain’s Amancio Ortego and Warren Buffett.

• Related: Romney’s wealth dwarfed by RI billionaire Jonathan Nelson’s (Nov. 16)

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2 Responses to “RI’s billionaire Nelson falls on Forbes list after $200M decrease”

  1. Ken Williamson says:
    March 6, 2013 at 1:21 am

    Aloha Ted,

    Oracle CEO Larry Ellison purchased the Island of Lanai sixth largest island at 141 square miles (at least 98% of island) from David H. Murdock for an undisclosed sum (2012). He later purchased (2013) Island Air Airlines that provides inter-island flight service between the various islands and Lanai.

    Owning Beechwood Mansion in Newport makes Larry Ellison a part-time resident of Rhode Island but what does owning one of the 8 islands that make up your state and the inter-island airline that provides inter-state transportation make you?

    However, Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay (and a Kahala, HI full-time resident on Island of Oahu) is ranked 123rd on Forbes list at $8.7 billion.

    If you were to talk about a state with the most millionaires per population that can reach into their pocket at any time and hand you $1 million in disposable real cash, Hawaii was bumped off the 1st in nation spot for multiple years to 2nd place (6.4 percent of Hawaii’s households are millionaires) by New Jersey by 0.01% in 2012 but that was before Larry Ellison moved into Hawaii.

    Annual Phoenix Marketing International Global Wealth Wealth Monitorsm (GWM-U.S.): http://www.phoenixmi.com/

  2. Ken Williamson says:
    March 6, 2013 at 1:34 am

    Sorry, forgot Oprah Winfrey #503 on Forbes list at $2.8 billion is a part-time resident of Island of Maui, HI with a spectacular house and organic farm.

    That makes three billionaires from the Forbes list living in Hawaii and probably more on the list.