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The Richest People In Texas, 2018

This article is more than 5 years old.

By Chris Helman, Linh Nguyen and the Forbes Wealth Team

Because Texas is obviously the best and most important state in the Union, I take pleasure each year in presenting a subset of our annual Forbes 400 list: the Richest People in Texas. This year 38 Texans made the Forbes 400, bested only by the 84 Californians and 73 New Yorkers. The usual suspects are here, with Dell, Bass, Perot and Cuban all making news this year. Les Alexander returns to the list after selling the Houston Rockets to Tilman Fertitta for $2.2 billion. Also returning after 17 years is software investor Joseph Liemandt

Some highlights: There are two brand-new names on the Texas Rich List this year, each with impressive stories and fortunes that are in no way rooted to those old mainstays of Texas wealth, oil and gas:

—Bill Austin founded Starkey Hearing Technologies nearly 50 years ago, and now it’s the nation’s largest manufacturer of hearing aids with $850 million in sales. Austin, 76, has donated more than 1 million hearing aids in developing countries. Starkey hearing aids have worn by Ronald Reagan, two popes and Mother Teresa. As Forbes writer Michela Tindera revealed in a feature story this year, Austin has said his passion to help people hear better was instilled in him by a higher power. “I made a deal with God,” he said at the embezzlement trial of Starkey’s former president last year. “And I have to keep my word.” Forbes estimates his fortune at $2.5 billion—for now anyway. With Starkey facing legal troubles and mounting competition, unless Austin can pull his troubled company together, this may be the only year he appears on the list. 

—And then we have Thai Lee, the CEO of software reseller and I.T. provider SHI International. Lee, 59, was born in Bangkok, grew up in South Korea, then emigrated to the U.S., where she worked at Procter & Gamble and American Express before buying a software reseller that she has built into a juggernaut with $8.5 billion in annual sales. Having built her business over two decades out of headquarters in New Jersey, Lee is now developing a 400,000-square-foot office complex on 34 acres in Austin. Forbes estimates her net worth at $2.3 billion. Her controlling stake in SHI makes it America’s biggest woman-owned business. And a humble woman too: “We have no executive parking,” Lee says. “We don’t have a special executive compensation plan. We try to make sure that everybody feels valued.”

Another highlight: The Bass Brothers. They are on a roll, having recently dished Richardson Carbon Black to Tokai Carbon for $300 million, auctioned their parents' art collection at Christies for $165 million and trading their oilfields in west Texas and New Mexico to ExxonMobil for $6 billion in stock. It was a Rex Tillerson's last deal at Exxon, and he negotiated it with Sid Bass. Some of those fields had been "in the family" since their oil tycoon uncle Sid Richardson (d. 1959) made one of the great fortunes of the early oil age. From their modest inheritance of about $2.8 million each, the brothers have built an investment empire. Bob is devoted to building the world's first supersonic private jet with Aerion Supersonic. Lee is a man of the land, operating vast ranches in south Texas, raising both longhorn cattle and thoroughbred horses. Ed is the renaissance man, whose love of architectural challenges led him to invest in both the ill-fated Biosphere project as well as the remarkable rebirth of downtown Fort Worth. They've all given generously, with Ed this year paying $160 million for the renovation of the Peabody Museum at alma mater Yale.

The Richest Texans, 2018:

1. Alice Walton 

$44.9 billion UP 

Age: 69

Fort Worth

The only daughter of Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, continues to top the list as the richest Texan with a jump in net worth of nearly $7 billion from last year. Brothers Rob and Jim still work for the family company, while Alice spends her time on art and horses. She also sits on the board of the Walton Family Foundation, which disbursed $536 million in 2017, mainly to educational and environmental causes, and to projects in the Ozarks.

2. Michael Dell

$27.6 billion UP

Age: 53

Austin

Five years after Dell took his company private in a leveraged buyout, the combined Dell Technologies announced that it will seek to return to public markets. Nearly half of Dell’s fortune lies in his investment firm MSD Capital, which has stakes in hotels like the Four Seasons Maui, Grand Central Terminal and DineEquity, parent of Applebee’s and IHOP chain. Dell started the PC giant in his University of Texas at Austin dorm room at 19 years old.

3. Andrew Beal 

$9.9 billion DOWN

Age: 65

Dallas

A college dropout who once had a job fixing broken TVs, Beal became the nation’s wealthiest banker by picking up distressed assets such as bonds backed by airplanes after 9/11, then cashing out at a profit. He attended Michigan State University and Baylor University, then dropped out and started Beal Bank in 1988. It now has $7.4 billion in assets. Beal bought a sprawling, 25-acre Dallas estate in 2016 for an undisclosed amount, only to sell it for $36 million in an auction less than 2 years later. 

4. Jerry Jones

$6.9 billion UP

Age: 76 

Dallas

Jones swapped place with Richard Kinder (No. 5) this year thanks to a $1.3 billion boost in his fortune. For the past 12 years, Jones’ Dallas Cowboys have held the title of most valuable NFL team, at $5 billion. He bought the team for $150 million in 1989. Jones made a big deal this year selling some Bakken shale oil fields for shares of Comstock Resources. He now owns more than 80% of Comstock, a stake worth about $650 million. 

5. Richard Kinder 

$6.6 billion DOWN

Age: 74

Houston

In April, Kinder and his wife, Nancy, donated $70 million for the restoration and redesign of Memorial Park in Houston, a large urban park with about 30 miles of trails. They have been instrumental in supporting the transformation of Houston’s network of winding bayous into a connected system of parks. They have also helped underwrite a dramatic expansion at Houston’s Museum of Fine Art. Kinder stepped down as CEO of gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan in 2015 but remains as its executive chairman. He cofounded the company in 1997. An avid reader, Kinder is a big fan of Winston Churchill. “In my view he's a real leader. Probably the greatest person of the 20th century in in terms of the direct contributions of one individual.”

6. Dannine Avara

$6.2 billion UP 

Age: 54

7. Scott Duncan 

$6.2 billion UP 

Age: 35

8. Milane Frantz 

$6.2 billion UP 

Age: 49

9. Randa Williams 

$6.2 billion UP 

Age: 57

The four children of Houston pipeline tycoon Dan Duncan inherited a tax-free $10 billion stake after his death in 2010, when there was a temporary repeal of the death tax. Today Enterprise Products Partners owns about 49,000 miles of pipeline, as well as crude oil and natural gas processing and storage facilities. Williams is the only one to sit on the board. The pipeline giant announced in July a plan to build an offshore terminal in the Gulf of Mexico to accommodate bigger ships for exporting crude oil to Europe and Asia.

10. Robert Rowling

$5.8 billion UP

Age: 65

Dallas

In 1996 Rowling made $500 million selling the family oil and gas fields, using the proceeds to buy the Omni Hotel chain. Since then he’s built it out into 54 locations, including new hotels in Boston, San Francisco and Nashville. In Austin the Omni Barton Creek will close for a year starting May 2019 for a $150 million makeover. Rowling is trying to sell Gold’s Gym, the fitness center chain Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous. Looking for $300 million. 

11. Ray Lee Hunt

$5.3 billion UP

Age: 75

Dallas

Hunt is the richest of the legendary oil wildcatter H.L. Hunt’s 15 children, and runs Hunt Oil. Sure, he still has oil and gas in Texas, but Hunt likes to go after big game, and has invested in LNG export terminals in Peru and Yemen and oil drilling in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Hunt also chairs Hunt Consolidated, where son Hunter serves as co-CEO and helped diversify the company into electric power with publicly traded high-voltage line operator InfraREIT. Hunt and his family own estimated 190,000 acres of land across the West, including historic Hoodoo Ranch, east of Yellowstone National Park.

12. Trevor Rees-Jones 

$5.3 billion UP

Age: 67

Dallas

In 7 deals over 7 years through 2012, his Chief Oil & Gas grossed $7 billion selling assets in Texas and Pennsylvania. Starting his career in the oil business in 1984 after working as a bankruptcy attorney, he became one of the biggest winners in the shale fracking revolution. During the oil downturn, he acquired passive royalty interests in oil field Permian Basin. He summers in Namibia and relaxes on his 65,000-acre ranch in Texas. The Rees-Jones Foundation has paid out more than $300 million in grants and has remaining assets of $520 million.

13. Robert Bass

$5 billion UP 

Age: 70

Fort Worth

If all goes according to plan, in five years Aerion Supersonic will make first deliveries of its AS2 supersonic, 12-seat, $120 million business jet. En route from New York to London it will do Mach 1.4 and get you there in 3.5 hours. He's put an estimated $1 billion into Aerion since 2013. Bass is a private equity legend, his family office having birthed money management firms that handle more than $100 billion in assets, like David Bonderman's TPG, Oak Hill, and Iron Point Partners, which has an investment in T5 Data Centers. Other T5 investors include Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Reid Hoffman and Sean Parker. They are building an enormous 400 mw data center at Ross Perot, Jr.'s AllianceTexas industrial complex in Fort Worth. Bass has given mostly to education, including $55 million to Stanford, $60 million to Duke and at least $33 million to Yale.

14. Kelcy Warren

$4.9 billion UP

Age: 62

Dallas

As a boy, Warren spent summers working with his dad as a welder’s assistant on Sun Pipeline in Texas. Now, as cofounder and CEO of pipeline behemoth Energy Transfer, he controls 83,000 miles of oil, gas and petrochemical lines traversing the country. In 2012 Warren donated $10 million toward the construction of a 5-acre park in Dallas, earning the right to name it. It’s now called Klyde Warren Park, after his son. At the park’s opening ceremony, he said his son would become his heir only if he devoted one day a month to clean the park. According to park staff, Klyde has held up his part of the bargain, cleaning yoga mats and pulling weeds. A music fan, Warren produces albums for singer-songwriters at his Austin studio, Music Road Records.

15. Tilman Fertitta

$4.5 billon UP

Age: 61

Houston

Fertitta’s over-the-top Post Oak development in Houston opened in March with a 250-room hotel, a conference center, 6 restaurants and bars, and a Rolls-Royce dealership in the lobby. Across the street he also sells Bentleys and Bugattis. Fertitta owns restaurant and entertainment group Landry’s and the Golden Nugget casinos. The star of CNBC’s Billion Dollar Buyer bought the Houston Rockets basketball team last year for $2.2 billion, the highest price paid for an NBA franchise. A dropout from the University of Houston, Fertitta is president of its board of regents. 

16. Robert Smith

$4.4 billion UP

Age: 55 

Austin

Growing up the son of African-American Ph.D’s in the early days of desegregation, Smith became the nation’s wealthiest African-American. His private equity firm Vista Equity Partners focuses exclusively on software deals, an area that not too long ago was shunned by private equity. Vista has acquired more than 200 software companies in the last 8 years and manages $31 billion. Its funds have posted annualized returns of 22% since he launched the firm 18 years ago. While studying at Cornell, Smith secured an internship at Bell Labs after calling every week for five months. Smith is also chairman of Carnegie Hall and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.

17. Ross Perot 

$4.2 billion UP

Age: 88 

Dallas

“The world wants things done, not excuses. One thing done well is worth a million good excuses.” Perot sure got things done well. While at IBM as a salesman, he quit the company when they wouldn’t give him more computers to sell after he hit the annual quota by March. In 1962 he founded Electronic Data Systems, and took home $1.5 billion selling it to G.M. in 1984. He snatched up another $800 million when Dell bought Perot Systems in 2009. When moving to the new Perot office on Turtle Creek in Dallas in 2017, he brought over his 6,000-object collection, including a walking stick purported to have belonged to Osama Bin Laden.

18. Bert Beveridge

$4 billion UP

Age: 56

Austin

Beveridge shot up 13 places from last year with an increase in his net worth of $1.5 billion. The founder of Tito’s Handmade Vodka started his nicknamesake company in 1997 using $88,000 racked up on credit cards. Last year’s estimated sales were 60 million-plus bottles of vodka, up from an estimated 45 million in 2016. Tito’s says it donates 100% of net proceeds for all items purchased in its online store to nonprofits. A geology and geophysics major at U.T., Beveridge traded oil and gas for the bottled ethanol business. 

19. Dan Friedkin 

$4 billion UP

Age: 53

Houston

Friedkin funds Project Recover, which looks for lost aircraft, ships and associated MIA soldiers from World War II. He also owns one of the largest collections of vintage military war planes. His philanthropy has taken him to Tanzania, where his conservation fund works to preserve 6.1 million acres of wildlife areas. In South Carolina, he and Robert McNair run a golf club that helps kids who aspire to play golf in college but lack the means to do so. Friedkin’s fortune stems from Gulf States Toyota, the $9 billion (sales) car distributor built by his father, Thomas (d. 2017). It has exclusive rights to sell Toyotas in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma. A film production studio Friedkin has invested in released its first movie, All the Money in the World, in 2017, receiving major award nominations. 

20. Jeffery Hildebrand

$4 billion UP 

Age: 59

Houston

This year Hildebrand stepped down from the CEO role even as his Hilcorp solidified its position as the biggest privately owned oil and gas company in America, with $4.5 billion of acquisitions in old natural gas fields and pipelines in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. In Alaska, Hilcorp plans to build a gravel island off the North Slope in the Beaufort Sea to develop the Liberty field. If all goes well, it could pump 60,000 barrels a day by 2022. A former ExxonMobil geologist, Hildebrand cofounded Hilcorp in 1990 and later bought out his partner for $500 million. In 2015 Hildebrand gave his 1,400 employees a $100,000 bonus each—a reward for doubling his company’s size in five years. Owns late singer John Denver’s spread in Aspen. He paid a record $300,000 for the Grand Champion Junior Market Lamb at this year’s Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. 

21. Mark Cuban

$3.9 billion UP

Age: 60

Dallas

After an investigation found “numerous instances of sexual harassment and other improper workplace conduct” in the Mavericks organization over roughly two decades, Cuban agreed to give $10 million to organizations supporting women. The Shark Tank star and his fellow Indiana Univeristy alum Todd Wagner sold internet radio firm Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999. Cuban’s Fallen Patriot Fund has given over $5 million to families of U.S. military personnel killed or seriously injured during the Iraq War.

22. Robert McNair

$3.8 billion EVEN

Age: 81 

Houston

Owner of the Houston Texans dropped six places from last year, mainly due to others’ jumps in net worth. In response to NFL players kneeling last year, McNair reportedly told fellow NFL team owners they cannot “have the inmates running the prison.” That caused an uproar, and he later apologized, saying he was referring to league officials. McNair bought the franchise in 1999 for $700 million after selling his power generator company Cogen Technologies for $1.5 billion. He and his wife, Janice, donate more than $20 million each year to their foundation dedicated to education.

23. Sid Bass

$3.4 billion EVEN

Age: 76

Fort Worth

Sid and his brothers, Edward, Lee and Robert, have been busy unloading assets. They got out of the dirty carbon black refining business, selling to Tokai Carbon for $300 million. And they unloaded their Permian Basin oil interests to ExxonMobil for $5.6 billion in stock. Sid negotiated the deal directly with CEO Rex Tillerson, his last before joining the Trump administration. But the most intriguing reacquisition came in late 2017 when they sold In late 2017 they sold about 30 pieces from their parents' art collection at Christies, bringing in about $160 million. The Van Gogh, 1889, “Enclosed Field With Ploughman” went for $81.3 million. The 1933 Joan Miro “Peinture” for $23.4 million. 1921 Matisse's “Le Regates de Nice,” for $16.6 million. Max Carter at Christies called the collection eclectic but of top quality. Perry and Nancy Lee Bass started their collection in the 1960s and built it through the 1990s. They bought Edouard Vuillard's "Yvonne Printemps" in 1997. Other works sold were by Serge Poliakoff, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Raoul Dufy.

24. John Arnold

$3.3 billion EVEN

Age: 44 

Houston

The Enron gas-trading wunderkind stopped managing other people’s money in 2012 at age 38, shocking the hedge fund world with his retirement. But Arnold is still investing. Last year his Centaurus Renewable Energy sold a collection of solar farms. He is believed to have partnered with LLOG Exploration on deepwater developments in the Gulf of Mexico with names like “Who Dat” and “Neidermeyer”—daringly located in a lease block adjacent to BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. He and his wife oversee the Laura & John Arnold Foundation. With $2.2 billion in assets and Arnold pouring in an average of $150 million more a year, they have already given away $1 billion in grants to address social issues, including pension reform, criminal justice reform, and efforts to rein in drug pricing. 

25. David Bonderman 

$3.3 billion UP

Age: 75

Fort Worth

“Bondo” cofounded private equity giant TPG with James Coulter in 1992 after leaving Robert Bass’ family office. This year TPG exited its four-year investment in Chobani, having rescued the yogurt maker from a cash crunch. He also led a $1.9 billion deal in April to fund Du Xiaoman, the fintech spinoff of Chinese internet giant Baidu, alongside other investors such as Carlyle. Through his Wildcat Foundation, Bonderman has donated tens of millions to support wildlife conservation. For his 60th birthday Bonderman hired the Rolling Stones and Robin Williams. For his 70th it was Paul McCartney at Wynn in Las Vegas.

26. Joseph Liemandt 

$3 billion RETURNEE

Age: 50

Austin

Liemandt is the founder of ESW Capital, an investment firm that purchases software companies. In 1996, at age 27, he appeared on a Forbes cover highlighting the wave of young tech entrepreneurs. Now 50, he returns to The Forbes 400 after a 17-year absence, and with a doubled net worth. Liemandt also founded Trilogy Software, a product and sales configuration software company that was prominent in the 1990s.

27. Gerald Ford 

$2.9 billion EVEN

Age: 74

Dallas

Ford bought his first distressed bank, First National Bank of Post, Texas, in 1975. He continued to acquire 19 banks in 18 years. His most successful deal was in 2002, when he and billionaire friend Ronald Perelman sold Golden State Bancorp to Citigroup for $6 billion in stock. His properties include ranches in Kentucky and New Mexico, homes in Dallas and the Hamptons. 

28. Ray Davis

$2.6 billion DOWN

Age: 76 

Dallas

Davis owns 5% of natural gas distributor and pipeline company Energy Transfer, which he cofounded in 1995 with fellow billionaire Kelcy Warren. He stepped down as co-CEO in 2007. In 2010, Davis and XTO Energy founder Bob Simpson led a group of investors who backed Nolan Ryan to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team for $593 million. Forbes estimates the team’s value at $1.6 billion this year.

29. John Paul DeJoria 

$2.6 billion DOWN

Age: 74

Austin

In the 1970s DeJoria sold shampoo door-to-door and slept in his car. Then in 1980 he and Paul Mitchell cofounded haircare company John Paul Mitchell Systems with just $700. He still chairs the board. DeJoria is a supporter of marine wildlife conservation and anti-poaching group Sea Shepherd, which named a ship after him in 2017. In April, Bacardi acquired the rest of DeJoria’s Patrón Spirits in a deal that valued the tequila maker at an enterprise value of $5.1 billion.

30. Bill Austin

$2.5 billion NEW

Age: 76

Brownsville

Forty-eight years after he bought a tiny hearing aid parts lab, Austin debuts on The Forbes 400. His Starkey Hearing Technologies is the largest hearing aid manufacturer in the U.S. Starkey’s customers have reportedly included five U.S. presidents, two popes and singer Dolly Parton. In 2015 Austin, who is CEO, fired the top ranks of his executive leadership team, unleashing a series of events that most recently resulted in a former president of the company being found guilty of federal fraud charges. Austin spends much of his time traveling to distribute hearing aids in developing countries for the Starkey Hearing Foundation, which has donated some 1 million hearing aids around the world. For the whole story read this Forbes profile of Austin by Michela Tindera.

31. Lee Bass

$2.5 billion DOWN

Age: 62 billion

Fort Worth

Lee and wife Ramona, own the expansive El Coyote and La Paloma ranches deep in south Texas, near the King Ranch, where they raise herds of longhorn cattle and conserve the land to attract and support migratory birds and wildlife. Theirs is a family of conservationists, having donated at least $30 million to the Fort Worth Zoo and tens of millions more to protect endangered rhinos and their habitat. Lee was commissioner of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for 12 years. Ramona and their son Perry Bass II operate a thoroughbred horse training program, which produced current contender Magnum Moon.

32. George Bishop

$2.5 billion EVEN

Age: 81 

The Woodlands

Bishop’s GeoSouthern Energy sold its fields in the Eagle Ford shale to Devon Energy for $6 billion during the fracking boom in 2014. In 2015 he redeployed some capital into the Haynesville shale of Louisiana. He was an owner of River Ridge Golf Club west of Houston, which flooded in Hurricane Harvey last year, then closed for good. Also owns Chub Cay island and resort in the Bahamas.

33. W. Herbert Hunt

$2.5 billion UP

Age: 89

Dallas

With his brother Bunker, Hunt tried and failed to corner the world silver market in the 1970s, building up a hoard of 195 million ounces before the market cratered. He remains in the oil business, the first source of his wealth, with oilfields in the Bakken of North Dakota and a refinery complex in Louisiana. In 2012 he sold some oilfields to Halcón Resources for $1.5 billion. He’s one of 15 children (by three women) of the legendary oil wildcatter H.L. Hunt.

34. Edward Bass

$2.4 billion DOWN

Age: 73 

Fort Worth

Big news Ed, 72, got married to Sasha Camacho, 36. She’s from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He had been married to Vicki. They got hitched just before Christmas and had a party hosted by Mercedes Bass at the Fort Worth City Club, so that tells us Mercedes is still part of the family (despite her divorce from Sid). Before this summer’s $160 million gift to renovate the Yale’s Peabody Museum, Bass had already given more than $100 million to the university. Bass is the Renaissance man among his brothers and was once the money behind Biosphere 2. Back home in Fort Worth he’s raising more than $300 million in private funds for the new indoor sports venue Dickies Arena that will draw more business to the revitalized Sundance Square district. Bass also chairs the Sid Richardson Foundation (started by his uncle), with assets of more than $500 million. Once called “a Texas-bred cross between Prince Charles and Lorenzo de Medici.

35. Thai Lee

$2.3 billion NEW

Age: 59

Austin

Thai Lee is CEO of $8.5 billion (sales) IT provider and software reseller SHI International, which boasts 17,000 customers, including Boeing and Johnson & Johnson. Lee grew the company for the past two decades out of its New Jersey headquarters, but now is building a 400,000 square foot office complex in Austin, Texas, where it currently has about 900 employees. The daughter of a prominent Korean economist, she was born in Bangkok, grew up in South Korea and moved to the U.S. for high school. Her father traveled the world promoting his country’s postwar development plan. She went to Amherst then back to Korea where she worked at Daesung Industrial in Seoul. In 1985 she graduated from Harvard Business School. After stints at Procter & Gamble working on brands like Always and Crest, then a couple years at American Express. Lee and her then-husband paid less than $1 million in 1989 for a software reseller, the predecessor to SHI. She does her utmost to keep a low profile, and to keep everyone, both customers and employees, happy. No reserved parking spot, she sits in a cubicle farm, keeps her own calendar, does her own filing. "A dollar amount could never accurately convey the respect and admiration I have for the employees of SHI," she says.

For more, check out David Ewalt's 2015 profile of Lee, The Modest Tycoon.

36. Drayton McLane

$2.3 billion UP 

Age: 82

Temple

In December, McLane became chairman of Texas Central, a company that aims to build a high speed train connecting Dallas and Houston. McLane started work at age 9 sweeping floors at his family business, McLane Co., a grocery distribution company, then ran it for 32 years. He sold it to his friend Sam Walton in 1991 for $50 million and 10.4 million shares of Walmart. Later Walmart sold it to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003. He is a generous donor to his alma maters, Baylor and Michigan State, both of which have built stadiums that bear his name. McLane also teaches Sunday school.

37. Ross Perot Jr.

$2.3 billion UP

Age: 59

Dallas

Perot Jr. watched his famous father, Ross Perot Sr. make his fortune, then made his own. His most significant asset: Alliance Texas, a 20,000-acre sprawl of industrial warehouses, railyards and an airport north of Fort Worth. Amazon, Facebook and Charles Schwab, to name a few, are its tenants. He’s planning a Dallas skyscraper with famed architect Norman Foster and a flying taxi venture with helicopter firm Bell and Uber, and he intends to mine asteroids in space. 

38. Leslie Alexander 

$2.1 billion RETURNEE

Age: 75 

Houston

Alexander returns to the ranks after 11 years as he sold his Houston Rockets NBA team to Tilman Fertitta for $2.2 billion last fall. Alexander bought the Rockets in 1993 for $85 million. He dropped out of Brooklyn Law School at age 21 after his father died, heading to Wall Street to help provide for his mother. He began managing his own money in 1980. Debuting on The Forbes 400 in 2006, he dropped off a year later when student loans securitizer First Marblehead tanked. Alexander supports the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, named after his mother.

There are no doubt plenty more undercover billionaires living in the Lone Star state. If you know anyone who’s not on this list but should be, please drop me a line at chelman@forbes.com or on twitter @chrishelman. 


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