Patch Mill Valley, CA --Some of the wealthiest Americans made their fortunes in the Bay Area, according to Forbes magazine's annual list of the richest people on the planet, released this month.
Some of the top Bay Area billionaires are listed below and two are well known Marin residents: filmmaker and recent Lucasfilm seller George Lucas and hotelier David Pritzker.
Lucas amassed his fortune through the Star Wars series and other films, books and video games, as well as his special effects endeavors with Industrial Light & Magic. In October, he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for a whopping $4.05 billion, and has said he intends to give most of the money from that sale to charity. Disney is already busy producing a sequel, to be helmed by J.J. Abrams, and planning spin-off movies. Lucas recently got engaged to Ariel Investments partner Mellody Hobson.
Pritzker, 54, is one of 10 billionaire Pritzkers. A.N. Pritzker, Daniel Pritzker's grandfather, created industrial conglomerate Marmon Holdings and the Hyatt hotel conglomerate with his sons Jay, Robert and Donald. The family sold Marmon Holdings to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $4.5 billion in 2007.
Pritzker, a musician and music producer, is a longtime fan of jazz music. He made a silent film, Louis, about the life of Louis Armstrong, which was released to critical praise in 2010. A second jazz-infused film, Bolden, which focuses on New Orleans rag-time innovator Buddy Bolden, was scheduled to be released in 2012, but has been delayed, according to Forbes.
There are 14 billionaires living in San Francisco, including five members of the Gap store-founding Fisher family.
There is also a Bay Area icon, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who leads the rankings for the region and all of California.
Ellison ranks No. 5 on Forbes' Billionaires list, the same place he held in 2011. He is the third richest person in the United States, the magazine reports. The 68-year-old Woodside resident is worth an estimated $43 billion. Ellison made his fortune as co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation.
Here are a sampling of the Bay Area billionaires on the Forbes list.
*Wealthiest People in the Marin and elsewhere in the Bay Area:*
*Name* *Net Worth* *International Ranking* *U.S. Ranking* *Company* *Age* *Residence*
Larry Ellison $43 billion #5 3rd Oracle Corporation 68 Woodside
Larry Page $23 billion #20 13th Google 39 Palo Alto
Sergey Brin $22.8 billion #21 14th Google 39 Los Altos
Mark Zuckerberg $13.3 billion #66 25th Facebook 28 Palo Alto
Laurene Powell Job and family $10.7 billion #98 36th widow of Steve Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective 49 Palo Alto
Eric Schmidt $8.2 billion #138 45th Google 57 Atherton
Charles Johnson $5.7 billion #211 64th Franklin Resources (parent of mutual fund purveyor Franklin Templeton) 80 Hillsborough
Rupert Johnson, Jr. $5.6 billion #215 66th Franklin Resources
71 Burlingame
Charles Schwab $4.3 billion #299 95th Charles Schwab (financial broker) 75 Atherton
Gordon Moore $4.1 billion #316 101st
Intel 84 Woodside
George Roberts $4.1 billion #316
101st
KKR (leveraged buyouts) 69 Atherton
George Lucas $3.9 billion #346
111th
director/producer 68 San Anselmo
John A. Sobrato and family $3.9 billion #346
111th
Sobrato Development 73 Atherton
Jeffrey Skoll $3.7 billion #363 120th eBay 48 Woodside
Reid Hoffman $3.1 billion #437 144th LinkedIn 45 Palo Alto
Andreas von Bechtolsheim $2.8 billion #503 German citizen Google 57 Palo Alto
John Doerr
$2.7 billion #527 181st Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 61 Woodside
Richard Peery $2 billion #736 249th real estate 74 Palo Alto
Romesh T. Wadhwani $1.95 billion #785 262nd Symphony Technology Group 65 Palo Alto
Meg Whitman $1.9 billion #792 264th eBay 56 Atherton
Thomas Siebel $1.8 billion #831 279th software 60 Woodside
Daniel Pritzker $1.75 billion #868 290th hotels, investments 54 Marin County
David Cheriton $1.7 billion #882 292nd Google 61 Palo Alto
David Filo $1.7 billion #882 292nd Yahoo 46 Palo Alto
Kavitark Ram Shriram $1.65 billion #922 304th Google 56 Menlo Park
Scott Cook $1.5 billion #974 328th Intuit 60 Woodside
Jerry Yang
$1.5 billion #974 328th Yahoo 44 Los Altos Hills
Mark Stevens $1.3 billion #1107 359th S-Cubed Capital 53 Atherton
Jim Breyer
$1.2 billion #1175 377th venture capital 51 Woodside
Robert Duggan $1.2 billion #1175 377th Pharmacyclics 68 Palo Alto
Carl Berg $1.1 billion #1268
392nd
real estate 75 Atherton
*Source: Forbes.com*
There are also 14 billionaires living in San Francisco, including five members of the Gap store-founding Fisher family.
*How does it feel living among so many billionaires? *Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
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