Clippers Owner Steve Ballmer Becomes 9th Member Of The $100 Billion Club
You've heard a lot about business tycoons Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Well, meet the newest member of the highly exclusive billionaire club. Former Microsoft CEO and owner of Los Angels Clippers, Steve Ballmer's net worth has grown $20.1 billion since the beginning of the year. This cranks his wealth up to $101 billion, making him the 9th person in the world to achieve this massive feat.
How'd Ballmer end up at the billionaire roundtable amongst the likes of the richest men alive? Many attribute his huge boost of income to his stake in Microsoft. While the savvy businessman parted ways with the company back in 2014, he still holds 4% stack in the Windows manufactures in which he oversaw for 14 years. The stack acclimates to 333 million shares, Bloomberg reports. As Microsoft now stands as the second American company to reach $2 trillion in valuation, Ballmer certainly sees a pretty penny from his stake.
Ballmer was said to be one of Microsoft's very first employees, even being classmates with tech legend Bill Gates during his days at Harvard. After being an integral figure of the company since the 80's, Ballmer became its CEO back in 2004.
Though this surely amounts to a great deal of Ballmer's fortune, it'd be a mistake to overlook his ties with the Clippers. Ballmer purchased the team for $2 billion the same year he stepped down from his position at Microsoft. Ballmer had previous experience in the field of managing athletes while he was at Harvard.
"I learned the most important thing I've ever learned," the billionaire recounts to PC Mag, "The most important business learning exercise was as manager of the Harvard football team. I had to come in, memorize the names of 100 people basically in a day, and I had to get up in front of 100 football players—which is not exactly—they're a kind of rowdy lot
Buying the team, which is now valued at $2.6 billion, helped Ballmer to lower his tax rate. According to ProPublica, his tax rate stands at 12 percent, with him reporting up to $700 million in losses throughout the years. The publication shows that, while the Clippers owner made $656 million in 2017, he only paid $78 million in taxes.
Ballmer isn't the only one who'll be joining the $100 billion club. Closing in on becoming the 10th member is Larry Ellison. The founder of Oracle almost made it with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index listing his net worth at $98 million.
Sources: Bloomberg, PC Mag, ProPublica
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