Steve Jobs Ranked World's 110th Richest Person With Net Worth of $8.3 Billion

AwakenedLands said:

Perhaps he'd donate to charity by selling stock if the government had a tax-free day? You know, like the one he's lobbying for to avoid paying taxes on Apple profits overseas?

Considering how everything he does he likes to have announcements, press releases, and events, I can't see how he'd anonymously donate to charity.

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Its pretty simple if you actually look at Job's history. In relation to Apple, everything is huge and PR oriented. The man himself, incredibly private.

Also, Jobs isn't the one pushing for the tax holiday other than just being the head of the company. You can bet that its the accounting department that is heading that one up.

AidenShaw said:

You're basing that on three words - not on the record of nearly a decade of court fights between several groups trying to preserve history, and one rich bastard who wanted to build something shiny.

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No It's based on one word. Well that and the history of design shows a constant struggle between progress and regression. With the regression generally taking on names like something something revival. Anytime anything truly interesting comes out of a regression period then it tends to take a name and life of it's own.

So seeing the house was built in the 20's a really progressive period for design yet is known as part of a revival style not say "The Washington School" really does suggest a weak design merit case.

Rocketman said:

One wonders what his ranking would be if SEC returned his stock options revoked and simply repriced them to whatever they claim would have been right. Probably 10-20 points higher.

SEC let plenty of firms use accounting practices known as "Generally Accepted Practices" or GAP to set options prices for supplementary benefits for key employees. The practices were in fact common and used by a wide range of firms.

SEC then arbitrarily decided to enforce against those firms. Apple included, by saying they mis-priced the options despite complying with GAP.

The typical arbitrary regulator mind-change would simply result in a repricing and restatement, but this time around they decided to gain political points and notariety for the government agency itself by surprise enforcing against GAP. More to the point going right to criminal threats and complaints rather than giving notice to adjust and comply.

These jack boot and selective enforcement tactics seem to be common near changes in Presidential administrations to attack friends of the other party. Jobs has a prominent Democrat on his board named Al Gore who was present during the scandal.

Rocketman - CA - R

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GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

Avalontor said:

GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

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Wow.. I haven't heard of that since college.

Steve's pretty liberal. He probably thinks his taxes are charitable donations. Like every other liberal who thinks that the government is a big charity

AidenShaw said:

One quote from the link in the first post says it all:



Petty. Selfish.

A few million from Jobs' stash of billions could have saved the mansion for a public legacy. But it's been destroyed.

There were a lot of people arguing for the historical significance of the property - so saying it had "little significance" is just parroting Jobs' argument.

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..and likewise, you're just 'parroting' the argument of those who say it DID have significance. You know I've learned? You'll get people who oppose ANY building being torn down. There was this huge, ******, run down department store in the city I used to live in, deprecating in prime downtown land. It took YEARS of battling for the city to finally tear it down, and make something useful that the public might actually benefit from. All these people protesting that it had significant 'historical' value were full of ****, and they wasted millions of city money just to delay the inevitable. So your argument that it should have stayed because of these people's arguments means nothing, as they dont tend to be objective nor rational, often desperately seeking a 'cause' they can run with. I haven't seen a single credible source that had a strong argument for the historical value of this building- quite the opposite.

What's hilarious is that some here actually pretend to give a rat's ass about that place. If jobs hadn't lived in it, nobody would know about it. Grow the **** up, and stop trying to paint the man as evil/selfish/whatever because of this. The judgemental attitude in this thread is sickening.

AidenShaw said:

How do you "move" a 14K sq ft plus house?

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Chainsaws and trucks. Lots of 'em.

And no that's not a stupid snide remark. That's how they move lots of buildings.

TigerWoodsIV said:

It's funny how outeageous your post is. While quite calm, it is also quite unintelligent. As the original poster correctly points out, if Steve tried to sell 8 billion of mostly Apple stock, the company's stock would take a dive and all the investors in the company and the company itself would take a huge hit.

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Not only that, but it's also usually illegal for an executive to do so. Most executives are under restrictions as to the volume of shares they can dispose of at any time, and this is to protect the market for that company's shares from catastrophic volatility that could also swing an entire sector... especially in Apple's case. The net result might be wiping out of entire pension funds at other companies which have invested heavily in tech for growth.

And someone said something about dividends before, which is also insane. Why would anyone want a company with such profits and stock growth to start giving it away instead of putting it back in the company to promote further growth. If the stockholders want money, sell your stock and multiply your money by 30 if you've been a stockholder for the last decade.

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Berkshire Hathaway has only issued dividends once, and never again. They competently reinvest the money, and that's what you want as a shareholder if you are confident that management has a better idea of where to allocate retained earnings than you do. And if you're not confident of that, you might want to find another company to invest in. Hopefully, Steve Jobs will learn from Warren Buffett's example, however, and be coaxed into the Giving Pledge, a joint effort by Buffett and Gates (whose philanthropy was very largely inspired by Buffett's) to encourage the world's wealthiest individuals to commit at least 50% of their net worth to charity. Buffett himself is in a similar situation to Jobs, with 99% of his wealth tied in Berkshire stock.

He is a lot older than Jobs, and is now transferring Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation in annual disbursements, the proceeds from which must be spent on immediate humanitarian needs and not shoveled into either an endowment or used to pay administrative expenses. I suspect that Steve Jobs will do something similar, but as a Buddhist he's probably encouraged not to be making a big public deal about what his plans are for that money... and instead just quietly do it. I don't know, but I refuse to speculate. But it's clear that Jobs is not blowing that fortune by selling off shares in droves and just increasing his material acquisition.

It just annoys me when people make statements without any knowledge of how the market works. Mature companies that aren't looking to grow as much give out dividends because otherwise they'd just build up an insane amount of cash and not have anything to do with it. While Apple has a lot of cash, they spend a lot of money on R&D, which is why they come out with products first like the iPhone and iPad. In essence, they get the investors a better return over time by using possible dividends to grow the company instead of giving out their money. If they gave out dividends over the last 10 years, it probably wouldnt have grown the stock anywhere near the $340 or so that it has.

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Berkshire Hathaway has never issued a stock split, never issued additional common stock beyond the 1.5 million outstanding shares originally held in 1964, and only once issued a dividend.... BRKA closed today at $128,000 per share. I doubt investors are complaining about the lack of dividends.

Dividends serve the purpose of short term compensation to investors and managers in which case they're not unlike stock options (another thing Berkshire managers are not issued), a form of inflating compensation beyond an honest-to-goodness calculation of what dollar amount a manager's performance actually warrants. This encourages short term thinking, whereas reinvestment of retained earnings encourages long-term thinking. Long-term wins in the end, by the advantage of compounding interest over time.

Without compounding, you'll collect at regular intervals over the short term, but compounding interest (or reinvesting dividends, same principle) produces exponentially-higher returns over the long term.

rochford said:

I expect this is well known, but the Forbes web site finds an interesting link between all these tech billionaires, other than they're filthy rich:
Bill Gates - $56b
Larry Ellison - $39.5b
Michael Dell - $14.6b
Steve Ballmer - $14.5b
Mark Zuckerberg - $13.5b
Paul Allen - $13b
Steve Jobs - $8.3b
Dustin Moskovitz - $2.7b

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I don't think anyone would argue that Jobs is the most powerful man in the tech industry right now so when you have someone like Ballmer sitting a couple places above him, you KNOW he ain't doing it for the money.

neboat said:

Maybe Jobs does give to charity but we don't hear about it?

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Not a chance in hell.

YO STEVE!

Can you loan me a nickel?

AidenShaw said:

While none of us (except the turtlenecked guy and his accountants, if they're reading) know what Jobs' charitable contributions are, he did miss one chance to leave a legacy to Silicon Valley.

In 1984, Jobs bought a stunning, historical mansion in the foothills above Silicon Valley - the Jackling House, a 14,540-square-foot, 14-bedroom home designed by a famous architect.

Whereas other wealthy people have left significant homes for the public (Villa Montalvo and Filoli in the immediate area, for example), Jobs decided that he wanted to build something shinier.

Therefore, instead of leaving a legacy for the region, an architectural gem has been

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What a petty, selfish act - when a small fraction of his wealth could have left the "Jobs-Jackling House" as an enduring legacy.

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It seems interesting to me that for example in wikipedia, the amount of text describing how the Evil Steve Jobs demolished the house far outweighs any text about the house itself. For example in the page for George Washington Smith, nothing is said about this house at all, except that Steve Jobs pulled it down. The page about Jackling gives no information about the house itself except the year it was built and the architect, followed by a length article about Steve Jobs, longer actually than the text about Daniel C. Jackling himself.

I would conclude that the only thing of importance about the house is that Steve Jobs demolished it.

GadgetAddict said:

And most people in this forum (more or less) helped Jobs get there...

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lol yeah - think steve should send all us MR subscribers some freebies!

I know it's already an absurd amount of money, but I wish Steve would break the #100 stop before he dies. I just hate how stupid people (like Bernard Arnult) who are born into being the richest.

h4lp m3 said:

I know it's already an absurd amount of money, but I wish Steve would break the #100 stop before he dies. I just hate how stupid people (like Bernard Arnult) who are born into being the richest.

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Would like to see a list like this reordered for "Return on Investment".

h4lp m3 said:

I know it's already an absurd amount of money, but I wish Steve would break the #100 stop before he dies. I just hate how stupid people (like Bernard Arnult) who are born into being the richest.

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The good news is that the richest(Gates) is self-made.

SixPenceRicher said:

$8.3B isn't anything to sneeze at... I think another appropriate metric is what kind of total wealth -- personal and attributed to their specific companies, employees, and shareholders (their ecosystems) -- was generated by each individual. I'd be willing to bet that Steve and Bill come out damn near the top, if not the top.

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Only if one defines "their ecosystems" as materialistic.

You can't hug your money. At least most people I know don't.

Who knows what the man with the spectacles does. Obviously he's more attached to it than many of his peers. At this advanced stage of his life, and his questionable health, it's sad that he cannot let go & retire.

While he still has the ability, he would be a great mentor to groom a replacement. Although it's possible that's going on now behind the scenes, the insiders suggest otherwise.

Given the fact that the board is less than thrilled with his choices surrounding this, like everything else Apple, it'll end up being a good movie.

maclaptop said:

...

While he still has the ability, he would be a great mentor to groom a replacement. Although it's possible that's going on now behind the scenes, the insiders suggest otherwise.

Given the fact that the board is less than thrilled with his choices surrounding this, like everything else Apple, it'll end up being a good movie.

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But probably not a great ride for Apple's owners.

As for Jobs' house, it could be worse. He could create some gargantuan 66,000 square-foot monstrosity and name it after a cheesy 70's disco film film followed by "2.0". Yes, as in Version 2.0.




Not that it hasn't been done.

Ok, ok. Maybe it really is a reference to Citizen Kane...or "Kubla Khan." Wait, how are either of those good?!!

GadgetAddict said:

And most people in this forum (more or less) helped Jobs get there...

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Steve Ballmer, net worth: $14.5 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer

And most people in this forum (more or less) helped Ballmer get there. :roll eyes:

And what did they get in return, exactly? Windows and Office retreads. Thanks a ****ing lot.

These billionaires must stash their cash in thousands of banks, interests + huge stocks + growing business, the rich is getting out of control, its like feeding steroids in to Superman, freaking overpowered.

U go, Steve!