Hartford Business Journal

June 28, 2021

Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1387295

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 19 of 47

20 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 28, 2021 5. Karen Pritzker Entrepreneur, Investor, Philanthropist Net Worth: $4.9 billion W ith a reported $4.9 billion pocketbook, according to Forbes, Branford heiress Karen Pritzker wants to make the world a better place. "My father has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to make the world a better place throughout his long business and philanthropic career," Pritzker said when she and her husband (who has since passed away) made a $3 million gift to endow a Yale School of Medicine professorship in pediatric surgery. The Pritzker family fortune started with Abram Nicholas, son of a Ukrainian immigrant, who invested in real estate and small companies. According to Britannica, the family fortune quickly grew, and they managed to protect their profits from heavy taxation by putting the money into a number of trusts. Nicholas' sons expanded the business empire in the 1950s. They bought the Hyatt House hotel in Los Angeles and built it into a chain of more than 150 Hyatt hotels in the United States and abroad; and bought financially troubled companies, rejuvenating them into profit-making enterprises. By the mid-1980s the Pritzker family owned significant real estate holdings and hundreds of companies and subsidiaries, including the Hyatt Corp., Royal Caribbean Cruises and Ticketmaster (which they sold in 1993), Britannica noted. Their largest business interest was the Marmon Group, a diversified holding company with businesses that included Wells Lamont (gloves), Trans Union (credit reporting), and interests in construction, transportation and water treatment. Karen Pritzker isn't resting on her predecessors' accomplishments. In 2008, she and her husband, through the Pritzker Vlock Family Office, were early investors in LaunchCapital, which helps entrepreneurs gain quick access to seed capital and mentorship, and reports it's invested in more than 200 companies that are "reinventing industries across the nation." The family office owns and manages a broad portfolio of public equities, consumer, biotech, industrial and medical equipment and technology businesses, several venture funds, and real estate. Karen Pritzker runs the Pritzker Vlock Family Office and is involved in numerous national philanthropic efforts individually and through her family foundation with emphasis on literacy, education, medicine, theater Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2020 list, traces its origins to 1867, when the Wilh. Schmitz-Scholl company was established as an importer and distributor. By 2019 (the most recent year the company released results) Tengelmann posted sales equivalent to $9.6 billion in the U.S. with a 90,000-plus workforce. The company focuses primarily on consumer goods, including clothing, home and garden and non-food household and children's products; but it's also involved with shopping centers and residential properties. "Strategically, we invest exclusively in companies that demonstrate their core values through sustainable and profitable management," the company says. "Our strategic investments are either market leaders or strive for market leadership. Future investments will also be based on these themes and guidelines. Venture capital investments can develop into strategic holdings. Real estate in the retail, residential, and in the future office sectors, will remain an important component of our portfolio." Haub, whose net worth is about $2.9 billion, according to Forbes, is also co-founder and chairman of Emil Capital Partners, a Greenwich-based venture-capital group that invests in technology, consumer and health products. 8. Bradley Jacobs CEO XPO Logistics, Greenwich Net Worth: $3 billion G reenwich resident Bradley Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur. He built five companies into billion- or multibillion-dollar enterprises, including three publicly- traded companies: XPO Logistics, where he's chairman and CEO; United Rentals, which he co-founded in 1997; and United Waste Systems, founded in 1989. He also founded Hamilton Resources (UK) Ltd. and served as its chairman and chief operating officer, and co-founded his first venture, Amerex Oil Associates Inc., where he was chief executive. In 2010, he formed Jacobs Private Equity LLC "to make a substantial equity investment in a single company with the potential for superlative value creation." He selected the logistics industry as a strong match to both his skill set and investment criteria, saying that "the industry is large, fragmented and growing faster than GDP, making it ripe to leverage scale and technology." In a previous interview with the and land preservation. Under Managing Director Elon Boms, the Pritzker Vlock Family Office has reported investments in technology, consumer, medical device and biotech companies, including Valerion, Arccos Golf, Gelesis and Spotify. 6. Andreas Halvorsen Founding Partner & CEO Viking Global Investors, Greenwich Net Worth: $6.3 billion D arien resident Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global Investors LP did pretty well in 2020, returning 25% to investors after management and performance fees, according to Yahoo Finance. And it wasn't a one- off, either. From 1999 to 2009, Viking Global's Equities III fund generated average returns of 22%, according to the financial website. The fund has seen some down years too, like 2016, when Viking lost 4% net of fees, primarily because of some bad bets on pharmaceutical stocks. The fund manages about $44 billion of capital, with offices in Greenwich, New York, Hong Kong, London and San Francisco. Viking uses fundamental analysis to select investments, primarily public and private equity interests across industries and geographies. As of the fourth quarter of 2020, Viking's investment portfolio included companies like Microsoft, BridgeBio Pharma Inc., Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp., Fidelity National Information Services Inc., T-Mobile U.S. Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Interesting fact: Don't get in a fistfight with Halvorsen — besides his net worth north of $6 billion, according to Forbes, he's a former officer in the Royal Norwegian Navy's SEAL Team. 7. Christian Haub Managing Partner Tengelmann Group Net Worth: $2.9 billion M ost of Connecticut's wealthiest residents made their fortunes from hedge funds and other investments. But Christian Haub made his the old-fashioned way: through retail activity. And the business roots of the Greenwich resident — managing partner of the Tengelmann Group and chairman of the management board of Tengelmann Twenty-One KG — run deep. The company, which made it onto "We are long-term owners with a near-infinite time horizon, very unlike the typical private equity model," he said a few years back in an interview with the Financial Times. "Our model does not rely on M&A. In building efficient companies through a culture of meritocracy and ownership, we free up capital to reinvest aggressively behind our brands and businesses. Product innovation and effective marketing are central pillars of our strategy, and serve as growth drivers at companies like RBI and Kraft Heinz." 3G Capital says its strategy involves identifying and investing in "opportunities that are well-positioned for profitable, long-term growth and success across a variety of different sectors and regions." They seem to be hitting the right notes: Behring alone has a net worth of $7.5 billion, according to Forbes. 4. Paul Tudor Jones, II Founder Tudor Investment Corp., Stamford Net worth: $7 billion P aul Tudor Jones II — founder of Tudor Investment Corp. and its chief investment officer — began his career in the "cotton pits" (where cotton trades, like options and futures, are transacted) before he formed the Tudor Group in 1980. Under his leadership, the firm has grown to include offices in Connecticut, New York, Palm Beach, Florida, London, Singapore and Sydney, while Jones' personal net worth is believed to be about $7 billion, according to Forbes. Tudor Investment embraces a discretionary global macro strategy — building portfolios around predictions and projections of large-scale countrywide events and geopolitical trends. It also says it employs "rigorous, applied research methods to test investment hypotheses and design quantitative computer-driven trading models across various investment horizons and global liquid asset classes," according to its website. What's on his mind now? Earlier this year, Jones told CNBC that bitcoin is "… a great speculation." The investment guru — who reportedly established Florida as his tax residence but maintains a home in the Belle Haven district of Greenwich — backed up his bitcoin belief with cryptocurrency investments representing up to 2% of his assets, according to the CNBC interview. "Every day that goes by that bitcoin survives, the trust in it will go up," he told the network. WEALTHIEST PEOPLE IN CT

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Hartford Business Journal - June 28, 2021