00:00 Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is senior reporter
00:07 Matt Drell. Matt, thanks for coming on in. Yeah, thank you for having me, Brittany. I
00:11 want to extend a big congratulations. The list of America's Deca billionaire families
00:16 has officially dropped. Before we dive into the list, I want to know why you raised the
00:21 stakes a bit and now made it Deca billionaires. Sure. So yeah, for about a decade now, we've
00:27 periodically been doing a list of America's richest families. And, you know, in past years,
00:34 we you know, most recently in 2020, we just did the top 50 richest families. And to get
00:41 to that 50 number, the cutoff was as low as I think was around, you know, the poorest
00:47 family on that list was around $7 billion. But obviously, you know, asset values for
00:53 everyone have gone up a lot since. So we figured it made sense to sort of up the ante and look
00:59 at families with a minimum net worth of $10 billion. And we ended up with almost the same
01:03 number of families. We had 45 families on the list. So after you upped the ante, walk
01:09 us through the methodology a little bit. How did you construct this list? Sure. So, you
01:15 know, we obviously do our sort of main list, the Forbes 400, and then the World Billionaires
01:20 list, which, you know, focuses on individual wealth. And, you know, this list is interesting
01:26 because it captures, you know, some very rich folks that for whatever reason, don't appear
01:32 on, you know, one of those lists, sometimes because, you know, the founder of the fortune
01:37 has died. And it's, you know, either split so many ways that the individual family members
01:43 wouldn't show up as individual billionaires on one of those other lists, or just sometimes
01:47 it's, you know, not as clear how the family fortune is split. So yeah, most of these families
01:53 are multi-generational. You know, we exclude, you know, people like Elon Musk, who obviously
02:01 would probably, you know, be the world's richest family if we counted him, you know, but we're
02:05 excluding people from our billionaires list who we credit with their entire family's fortune,
02:11 usually the founder of the fortune. Good. I wanted to talk about numbers next. So let's
02:16 start with the members of families. You said it's multi-generational. Is there a sweet
02:20 spot of how many family members are on there? Or does it really greatly vary? There's a
02:25 lot of variety. So, you know, we tried our best to estimate, you know, and find as many
02:31 family members as we could, including, you know, basically all descendants of the founder
02:36 and their spouses. And you've got families like the Duponts where it's, you know, you
02:42 know, long removed from the founder and the family members are up in the thousands. And
02:47 then there are, you know, a few families on the list that, you know, maybe have, you know,
02:52 as few as 10 or so. So to answer your question, there's a lot of variety. And combined, how
02:57 much is this list worth? Yeah. So the 45 families on the list are worth a pretty staggering
03:03 $1.3 trillion, you know, split among just 45 families. So that's a huge amount of money.
03:10 Eye popping to say the least. But who are some of those famous dynasties that made the
03:14 cut? Yep. So the reigning champion, so to speak, is the family behind Walmart, the Waltons.
03:24 You know, it's not very close, to be honest. They're $150 billion richer than the next
03:30 family in line. The next family in line was the Mars family, the family behind the Mars
03:38 candy fortune. And they actually, this year, ranked as the second richest family for the
03:45 first time since we've been tracking family wealth. You know, they'd, I think, been in
03:50 the three spot for a number of years behind the Kochs of Koch Industries, Charles Koch
03:56 and, you know, the widow of his brother, David, primarily. And interestingly, you know, Charles
04:04 made a large gift to nonprofits of Koch stock. It was in the range of about $5 billion over
04:13 the last few years. And if he hadn't done that, you know, they probably still would
04:17 have been the second richest family. So that was really what, you know, caused that flipping
04:22 in the two and three spot. We've heard a lot of these names, Kochs, DuPont, Marriott. But
04:28 I want to talk about any household names that didn't make the cut this year. Yeah, sure.
04:34 You know, so in past years where, you know, we've done longer lists, I think we've looked
04:41 at as many as, you know, 20 or sorry, 200 families in the past. And you'd see big names
04:48 like the Gettys or even, you know, the Kennedys at one point. You know, those names are are
04:53 not there this year, which I think sort of just gets at how difficult of a list it is
04:58 to crack. Obviously, we're talking about multi generational wealth. We're talking about
05:04 families with handing down money in the same business. But are all these families considered
05:09 old money? Is there any new money on this list? Yeah, I guess it depends how you define
05:17 the term. You know, obviously, there are families like the DuPonts where, you know, maybe a
05:23 single family member sits on the board at this point. But, you know, they're, you know,
05:29 relative to other families on the list, less involved in, you know, managing the company
05:33 that made them wealthy in the first place. And then, you know, there are, you know, families
05:40 certainly where even if the founder has passed on, you know, his kids or his grandkids even
05:48 are very involved in, you know, running the business. I think of, you know, even the Kochs,
05:54 you know, Charles is still there. He his father technically founded the company, but Charles
06:00 really built it and his son Chase is sort of slotted, it seems to kind of take over
06:06 for him. You know, Charles is 88. So they're kind of, you know, very actively succession
06:11 planning for him and his son is a big part of that. When you're thinking about these
06:16 45 families and looking at them, what trends are you emerge as you're looking at this list?
06:22 Are the industries and businesses that they're a part of? Do they vary greatly? What's that
06:26 look like? Yeah, there's a lot of variety. You know, we have families and a whole bunch
06:32 of, you know, different industries, you know, retail with the Waltons, you know, Coke in
06:37 and of itself does 100 different things. It's a very vast, diverse conglomerate, Mars Candy,
06:44 you know, a few real estate families. So yeah, I think we had pretty good coverage, you know,
06:50 spanning many different industries for the families on the list. I know you've highlighted
06:55 a few of the stories, but were there any surprises on the lists or any other families you want
07:00 to highlight? Yes, we actually only and you know, now in the past, we've had longer lists.
07:06 So you know, more families made it in the past, but there was only actually one family
07:14 that made it on to a Forbes families list for the first time. And that was the Millstone
07:20 Winter Heyman family. And you know that the family behind it's a conglomerate called Standard
07:27 Industries. And we consider the founder of that fortune to be this guy called Saul Heyman.
07:34 He was a corporate raider in the, I believe, 80s. And actually, he founded Standard Industries.
07:40 And then it was his two son in laws. They call them the two Davids. It's David Winter
07:47 and David Millstone. That's where the winter millstone comes from in that, you know, three
07:52 word family name. But they took over the conglomerate pretty early on and sort of built it. So they
07:58 are a newcomer and certainly an interesting family that folks may not have heard of on
08:03 the list. And we are a little bit over a month into 2024. Does it look like it's going to
08:07 be a good year money wise for these families? Yeah, I would say your guess is as good as
08:14 mine, Brittany. But, you know, I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of sort of uncertainty
08:20 out there about what the next year will hold, not only for these families, but for everyday
08:25 Americans and the individual billionaires on our list. So I guess we'll have to wait
08:30 and see. Well, Matt D'Oro, thank you so much for your reporting. You're welcome back anytime.
08:34 Thank you, Brittany.
08:34 Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Brittany.
08:35 Thanks, Matt.
08:35 Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Brittany. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt.
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