This year the billionaires of the Lone Star State fill 35 slots on this year's Forbes 400. That's down four from last year. The biggest reason Texas is losing ground to other states -- a billion just ain't what it used to be. This year's threshhold for inclusion in the Forbes 400 was $1.7 billion, up from $1.55 billion last year. Coming in just below that cut were such notables as Houston legal eagle Joe Jamail, Dallas real estate boss Ross Perot, Jr. and San Antonio natural gas tycoon Rodney Lewis. They'll still make our annual Forbes Global Billionaire's list
Fort Worth dealmaker Richard Rainwater did make the Forbes 400 this year, but passed away as we were going to press with the magazine after a 6-year fight with a brain disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. You can read our remembrance of Rainwater here.
As for geographical distribution, Houston and Dallas are tied with 12 rich listers each, while Fort Worth has 6 and Austin 3.
One of those calling Austin home is the only newcomer to the list, private equity boss Robert Smith (that's him here on the cover of Forbes.)
The Texas Rich List
1. Alice Walton
$32 billion
Age 60
Fort Worth
#12 on Forbes 400
Alice Walton's fortune stems from her stake in mega-retailer Wal-Mart, which her father Sam founded back in 1962. Unlike her siblings Rob and Jim -- also billionaires -- Alice hasn't taken an active role in the company, instead focusing on collecting and curating art. Her work culminated in the opening of the Crystal Bridges Art Museum in her hometown of Bentonville, Ark., in 2011. In 2013, she purchased a New Jersey home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and had it moved down to the museum's campus; it opens for tours in fall. Other staples of the collection include works from the likes of Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Georgia O'Keeffe. Some of the pieces in the museum she donated from her personal collection, which is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. She put her Texas ranch up for sale in September, asking nearly $20 million for the 1,432-acre estate along the Brazos river near Fort Worth. She's also dabbled in political spending, mostly to the Republican party. In 2014 she donated $25,000 to establish a political super-PAC supporting a U.S. presidential bid by Hillary Clinton. Together Alice, her two brothers and their sister-in-law Christy (widow of their brother John, who died in a plane crash) own 51% of Wal-Mart, with 11,000 stores. The stock price fell 15% in the past year, owing in part to a slowdown in key markets like Brazil and China.
2. Michael Dell
$19.1 billion
Age 50
Austin
#23 on the Forbes 400
Ever since Michael Dell bought out his computer company two years ago, he has been trumpeting the virtues of private ownership. "As a private company, Dell now has the freedom to take a long-term view," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year. "No more pulling R&D and growth investments to make in-quarter numbers. No more having a small group of vocal investors hijack the public perception of our strategy while we're fully focused on building for the future." He has reason to be pleased. His business is kicking off more than $2 billion in free cash flow each year, and he is using it to chip away at the $18 billion in debt he and private equity partner Silver Lake Management assumed when they took control over the company in 2013. In 1984, at age 19 Dell started the computer giant in his U.T. dorm room with $1,000. Four years later, it went public with a market capitalization of $85 million. By the time he took it private again in 2013, the company was worth $25 billion. He still holds a 70% stake but keeps most of his fortune in his private investment firm MSD Capital, whose wide array of investments includes car deal Asbury Automotive, PVH Corp. (parent to Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein) and DineEquity (operator of IHOP and Applebee's).
3. Andrew Beal
$11 billion
Age 62
Dallas
#42 on the Forbes 400
Andy Beal is a college dropout, a self-taught math genius, and one of the smartest investors in the country. With an expert eye for market movements, Beal made a tidy sum during the Great Recession, buying distressed assets while the nation's biggest banks were getting taxpayer bailouts. Sensing weakness in credit markets leading up to the financial crisis, Beal virtually stopped making or buying loans from 2004 to 2007. When the financial sector blew up in 2008, he snatched up beaten-down assets all over the country, including debt backed by a Houston refinery, a mortgage on an office building in Ohio and home loans from Alaska to Florida. Through his various Beal Banks in Texas and Nevada, the math whiz has built a team to lend to oil and gas producers; he believes the collapse in prices has opened new opportunities. In 2001 he gambled against the world's top poker players at the Bellagio in Las Vegas in one of the highest-stakes poker games ever. The mathematics enthusiast developed the Beal Conjecture, a complex mathematical problem, in 1993, and offered $1 million to anyone who could solve it. Mathematicians have been stumped for decades. Beal is a donor to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.
4. Charles Butt
$10.7 billion
Age 77
San Antonio
#44 on the Forbes 400
Charles Butt started working for the family business, Texas grocery chain H-E-B, at age 8. Florence Butt, his grandmother, founded the company in 1905 after her husband was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was unable to work. Her son Howard took over in the 1920s and expanded throughout Texas. Charles became chairman and CEO in 1971 and is today the majority shareholder. Two of his siblings and two nephews own stakes in the company as well. H-E-B has 316 stores in Texas, plus 52 stores in Mexico, and donates 5% of pretax profits to charity.
5. Richard Kinder
$8.9 billion
Age 70
Houston
#52 on the Forbes 400
Pipeline tycoon and his wife, Nancy, have donated $2 million to a PAC for Jeb Bush, clearly hoping the candidate will be as friendly to the oil and gas industry as his older brother was. Though he's still working to improve the political landscape for his pipeline company, Kinder Morgan, he handed over the CEO reins in June. Having cofounded the firm in 1997 after serving as president of Enron, Kinder has presided over some mammoth deals in recent years, including the $38 billion acquisition of El Paso Corp. in 2012 and the 2014 consolidation of Kinder's four publicly traded affiliates into a single company. Kinder (a former Army captain) and his wife have donated more than $100 million from the Kinder Foundation to fund the construction of parks and museums in Houston. (For more on Kinder's next act, check out this interview.)
6. Jeffery Hildebrand
$6.3 billion
Age 56
Houston
#73 on the Forbes 400
It has taken Jeffery Hildebrand 25 years to build the largest privately held oil company in America. A big focus these days is Alaska, where Hilcorp has been acquiring and reviving mature fields in the Cook Inlet and the North Slope. Further south, Hilcorp is a big driller in the Utica shale of Ohio (where authorities blame his operations for a string of small earthquakes in 2014). In September 2014 Hilcorp teamed with power generator NRG Energy on a world-scale project that will take carbon dioxide from a power plant and inject it into old fields to goose out more oil. The Houston billionaire started Hilcorp in 1989 with an eye toward buying up old oilfields, applying new technology to squeeze out profits. He's also had success spearheading new plays. Hildebrand's biggest payday came in 2011, when he turned a $100 million investment in the Eagle Ford shale into $1.8 billion with a sale to Marathon Oil. In 2010, as a reward for doubling the size of the company, every Hilcorp employee got $50,000 to buy a new car. For the next doubling, perhaps coming this year, the bonus is said to be $100,000. A horse lover, Hildebrand has built a polo field on his ranch in Aspen. Last year he bought a 957-acre property in Colorado that used to belong to John Denver. Hildebrand also serves on the boards of the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. In downtown Houston, Hilcorp is building a new 24-story, 500,000 square feet tower.
7. Robert Rowling
$6.1 billion
Age 62
Dallas
#76 on the Forbes 400
In 1989 Rowling and his father Reese (d. 2001) sold most of their oil and gas assets to Texaco (now Chevron) for $500 million. Rowling reinvested some of that into buying the Omni Hotels chain, and since then he's grown it into an empire. With more than 20,000 rooms at 60 locations, Omni now makes up the vast majority of Rowling's net worth. Highlights include the Amelia Island Resort in Florida and Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Tx. Omni is the largest hotel chain not to offer in-room adult movies. Rowling also owns the Golds Gym chain and is a big donor to Republican candidates. Gave $25 million to the University of Texas business school in 2013.
8. Ray Lee Hunt
$5.7 billion
Age 72
Dallas
#83 on the Forbes 400
This year Ray Hunt and his son Hunter launched an initial public offering of InfraREIT, the first-ever real estate investment trust dedicated to electric transmission assets. With partners, they launched the REIT several years ago and now hope for it to provide a platform for the acquisition of Oncor, the regulated utility division of bankrupt power generation giant Energy Future Holdings. It's a bit of a departure for this oil-soaked family. Ray looks to be the most successful of 14 children sired by legendary oil wildcatter H.L. Hunt. But it wasn't always that way. Half brothers Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt (d. 2014) were worth more than $10 billion in the late 1970s when they tried to corner the market in silver. Ray has been a little more careful. His trophy assets include the iconic Reunion Tower and the shiny new headquarters of Hunt Consolidated in Dallas. Like his father, Hunt is deep into the oil business; Hunt Oil is one of the largest privately held oil companies in the nation. In 2014, for $280 million, Hunt Oil sold its stake in the East Texas oil field, including the legendary wells H.L. bought in the 1930s from wildcatter Marion "Dad" Joiner. Turned out to be great timing, considering how oil prices have fallen since then. Overseas, Hunt was one of the first U.S. oil companies after the toppling of Saddam Hussein to land an oil exploration deal in the Kurdish region of Iraq. He's also leveraged his big balance sheet to partner on liquefied natural gas plants in Peru and Yemen (though terrorist attacks have plagued the latter project). Torch passing is underway: son Hunter Hunt, the second of his five children, is chief executive of Hunt Consolidated Energy; Ray remains chairman and CEO of Hunt Consolidated. He owns an estimated 190,000 acres of ranch land across the west.
9. Kelcy Warren
$5.5 billion
Age 59
Dallas
#86 on the Forbes 400
Weaker oil prices have barely made a slight dent in pipeline tycoon Kelcy Warren's fortune. His pipeline company Energy Transfer Equity, which he cofounded with fellow billionaire Ray C. Davis in 1995, is finally on track to acquire rival Williams Cos., which rebuffed a $48 billion acquisition offer in June 2015. Energy Transfer's bid to take over Houston energy company Targa Resources for $15 billion fell through in June 2014. Energy Transfer Equity is organized as a Master Limited Partnership, or MLP, which means it pays no federal income tax as long as it pays out most of its cash to shareholders. This motivates Energy Transfer it to make acquisitions, since investors expect ever-higher dividends. A music fan, Warren produces albums for singer-songwriters at his Austin, Texas studio, Music Road Records. (You can read a Forbes story about that here.)
10. Trevor Rees-Jones
$5.3 billion
Age 64
Dallas
#90 on the Forbes 400
Is the Dallas tycoon losing any sleep over the oil and gas bust? Not much. His Chief Oil & Gas is focused on natural gas, so he's already had three years to learn how to deal with low prices. On the contrary, all the new opportunities to buy up oilfields on the cheap have him "licking my chops." Rees-Jones got his start as a bankruptcy attorney, but one day he had a revelation: he wanted to be the guy making the deals, not the lawyer cleaning up after them. So in 1984 he decided to get in the oil business, and eventually became a shale fracking pioneer. His first success was in the Barnett shale of Fort Worth, where in 2006 he and his partners sold a bunch of land, wells and pipelines to Devon Energy and Crosstex for $2.6 billion. Next came a JV with Ross Perot, Jr. which they sold in 2008 to Quicksilver Resources in 2008 (netting Rees-Jones about $1.3 billion). He plowed back the cash, this time into the Marcellus shale of Pennsylvania. Within a couple years he cleared $2 billion more selling acreage to the likes of
11. Jerry Jones
$5 billion
Age 72
Dallas
#94 on the Forbes 400
His Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable sports team in the world. The team, which Jones bought for $150 million in 1989, is now worth $4 billion, enjoying a 25% jump since last year. Jones, who worked at his father's grocery store as a kid, was co-captain of the 1964 U. of Arkansas football team that won the national championship. The former oil wildcatter has funneled much of his football profits into lucrative retail and residential real estate developments in Dallas suburbs. An art collector, he acquired Norman Rockwell's painting "Coin Toss" at the same time he bought the Cowboys.
12. Dannine Avara
$5 billion
Age 51
Houston
13. Scott Duncan
$5 billion
Age 32
Houston
14. Milane Frantz
$5 billion
Age 46
15. Randa Williams
$5 billion
Age 54
tied for #94 on the Forbes 400
Dannine Avara, Scott Duncan, Milane Frantz and Randa Williams are heirs to their late father Dan Duncan's energy pipeline empire, Enterprise Products Partners. Formerly the richest person in Houston, Duncan died in 2010 at age 77 of a brain hemorrhage. He started Enterprise Products in 1968 with $10,000 and a truck; today the company owns nearly 49,000 miles of natural gas, oil and petrochemical pipelines. Duncan split his fortune evenly between all four children. Randa is non-executive chairman of the Enterprise Products board.
16. H. Ross Perot, Sr.
$4 billion
Age 85
Dallas
#138 on Forbes 400
In 1992 Perot spent $65 million of his own money on a presidential run, garnering 19% of the vote and, some say, pulling enough support away from George H.W. Bush to propel Bill Clinton into office. The billionaire political outsider might be the only man who truly knows how Donald Trump feels right now. (Back then Perot was campaigning to slow the flow of goods from Mexico, not people.) But don’t expect him to give The Donald any advice; these days Perot stays out of the limelight. His son Ross Jr. has donated $110,000 to Right To Rise PAC supporting Jeb Bush. Long before he was a presidential candidate, Ross Perot was the son of a cotton broker from Texarkana and a salesman at IBM. He quit Big Blue when they wouldn't give him more computers to sell after he hit his annual quota by March. So in 1962 he founded Electronic Data Systems, and netted about $1.5 billion selling it to G.M. in 1984. In 1986 he was a key investor in Steve Jobs' NEXT computer company. Later he launched Perot Systems, which %%%77%%% bought for $3.9 billion in 2009. Long a champion of POW/MIA efforts, in 1978 he recruited military vets to rescue two EDS employees imprisoned in Iran - a saga recounted in Ken Follett's "On Wings of Eagles." "The world wants things done, not excuses," he tells Forbes. "One thing done well is worth a million good excuses."
17. Dan Friedkin
$3.6 billion
Age 50
Houston
#164 on the Forbes 400
Dan Friedkin owns Gulf States Toyota, the auto distributorship that has exclusive rights to distribute Toyota vehicles in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The $8 billion (sales) company is the largest private business in Houston, profiting from the processing and distribution of every Toyota sold in these states since 1968. His father, Thomas Friedkin, founded the company but is now retired and serves as chairman emeritus. Dan, who is chairman, is diversifying. He's invested in a luxury hospitality management firm as well as a film production studio. He bought Hotel Jerome, a landmark property in Aspen, Colorado in February 2015 for a reported $70 million. Along with his father, he owns one of the largest collections of vintage military war planes. Through family-owned luxury travel and safari operators and the Friedkin Conservation Fund, a charitable organization established by the family to conserve habitat and wildlife in Tanzania, the Friedkins have contributed more than $100 million to support wildlife conservation and anti-poaching efforts in East Africa. Dan also serves as chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission.
18. Robert McNair
$3.3 billion
Age 78
Houston
Thanks to early detection and cutting edge treatments including immunotherapy, Robert "Bob" McNair conquered his bout with two types of cancer - chronic lymphocytic leukemia and squamous cell carcinoma. Now, he's looking forward to battling on Sundays in the NFL, hoping his Houston Texans -- which had a 9-7 record in the 2014 season -- can return to the AFC playoffs. Forbes values his 80% stake in the team at $1.85 billion -- about $500 million more than a year ago. Values of NFL teams have increased across the league thanks to increased revenues from stadium's and broadcasting rights. His original fortune came from the 1999 sale of power generator Cogen Technologies to Enron for $1.5 billion.
19. Robert Bass
$3 billion
Age 67
Fort Worth
#211 on Forbes 400
Aerion Corporation, a private jet start-up chaired by Robert Bass, is now accepting orders for the first supersonic business jet. Price tag: $120 million. The aviation company is Bass' latest venture. His other holdings span a wide range of industries. Robert and his three brothers inherited a fortune from their oil tycoon uncle Sid Richardson four decades ago and have been building on it ever since, working with investing talent from the likes of David Bonderman. Robert is believed to be the most financially successful of the brothers; in the early 1990s he founded investment company Oak Hill, which has since grown into four separate operations with total assets under management in excess of $40 billion. In 2012 he acquired a massive pad in Manhattan's 834 Fifth Avenue for a reported $42 million. In 2013, with wife Anne, he donated $50 million to Duke University to support interdisciplinary studies aimed at tackling complex societal problems. Their foundation is endowed with more than $90 million.
20. Mark Cuban
$3 billion
Age 57
Dallas
#211 on the Forbes 400
Cuban sold his video portal, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999. He has since spent the last decade and a half doing just about anything he wants. His latest antics include starring as the president of the U.S. in the movie Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! and selling Dallas Mavericks merchandise with an image of his likeness using a urinal. Cuban has played with the idea of running for the real presidency. "If I ran as a Dem, I know I could beat Hillary," he wrote in an e-mail to CNBC in September. "And if it was me versus Trump, I would crush him. No doubt." Cuban hasn't disclosed any giving to presidential candidates so far this year. But he has been throwing his money behind startups on ABC's hit show Shark Tank. He recently put $250,000 into Roominate, a toy company that makes electrically wired dollhouses to get girls interested in science and engineering. Cuban simultaneously tries to stay grounded and enjoy his riches. He's said that his biggest fear is in raising his kids to be entitled jerks, but he's not complaining about his lifestyle. When Rolling Stone asked Cuban what would surprise people about being a billionaire, he responded, "Nothing. It's f------ amazing and off the charts."
21. Ray Davis
$3 billion
Age 73
Dallas
#211 on the Forbes 400
In 2007 Davis stepped down as co-CEO of Energy Transfer Equity, a pipeline firm he cofounded in 1995 with Kelcy Warren. He still owns 6% of the listed company, which is in the process of trying to acquire rival Williams Cos. He spends time on the Texas Rangers, which he and other investors bought in 2010.
22. John Arnold
$2.9 billion
Age 41
Houston
#227 on the Forbes 400
Since abruptly shutting down his hedge fund in 2012 at just 38 years old, John Arnold has become one of the world's most creative philanthropists. A onetime Enron employee who is said to have made $750 million for the company in 2001 alone, Arnold got rich after Enron collapsed by identifying market inefficiencies at his own fund Centaurus Advisors. Now he devotes himself to finding flaws in public policymaking. Arnold helped launch the Coalition for Public Safety, which brings together an unlikely group of allies including the Koch brothers and the NAACP who are working together to rethink the criminal justice system. For one of his latest projects, Arnold reportedly put $1.2 million into developing an algorithm that predicts whether a defendant is likely to skip bail so that judges can rely more on data and less on their gut. He also invested in ex-convicts in New York and Massachusetts, putting money down for social impact bonds that fund state programs aiming to keep young men from returning to jail. If the programs are successful, the states will pay the money back that they save in prison costs. A Democrat who believes the government needs to be more careful about its budgets, he has backed pension reform across the country and is a strong supporter of charter schools.
23. John Paul DeJoria
$2.8 billion
Age 71
Austin
#234 on the Forbes 400
Entrepreneur John Paul DeJoria's most valuable investment, Patron Spirits, has been the unchallenged ruler of ultra premium tequila for more than a decade. With a booming market for quality liquor, more players have stepped in to try and dethrone the king: French giant Pernod-Ricard's $100 million bet on Avion tequila being the most notable example. Known for his scrappy background - DeJoria slept in his car and sold shampoo door-to-door - he teamed up with Paul Mitchell in 1980 and turned $700 into hair-care outfit John Paul Mitchell Systems, still going strong with an estimated $1 billion in annual revenues. DeJoria now believes he can make it big in yet another industry: mobile phone service. He launched ROK mobile in 2014, although tougher than expected negotiations with carriers have pushed down initial estimates of 1 million customers within the first year.
24. David Bonderman
$2.6 billion
Age 72
Fort Worth
#256 on the Forbes 400
What could be Bonderman's biggest payday yet-the IPO of $74 billion (assets) private equity firm TPG Capital-is on hold as the firm deflects criticism over its handling of a Caesars Entertainment unit filing for bankruptcy. TPG bought Caesars with Apollo for $30 billion in 2008. "Bondo" attended U. of Washington, then Harvard Law and became a civil rights attorney for Department of Justice. He later studied Islamic law in Cairo, and met TPG co-founder James Coulter while working for Robert Bass. The pair left to found TPG and pursue their first deal together: they invested $66 million in faltering Continental Airlines; ultimately made $640 million profit. Other big successes include Burger King and the $6 billion sale of Neiman Marcus in 2013. Together the two are still principal owners of TPG, which sold a 4.5% stake in itself to sovereign wealth funds in Kuwait and Singapore in 2011 that valued it at roughly $5 billion, plus another reported $250 million sale to China Life. A heavy political contributor, mostly to Democratic causes, he gave more than $500,000 to various party organizations last year and $175,000 to anti- Republican groups American Bridge 21st Century and Citizens for Strength & Security PAC.
25. Robert Smith
$2.5 billion
Age 52
Austin
#268 on the Forbes 400
A new entrant to the Forbes 400 this year, Robert Smith quit Goldman Sachs to open his own private equity shop, Vista Equity Partners, in 2000. He has since has racked up one of the best records in private equity buying and fixing up an unglamorous collection of enterprise software companies. Neuberger Berman bought a stake in his $15.9 billion (assets) Austin, Texas firm in July, but Smith is still the majority owner. That same month, Smith, who is now the nation's second richest African American, made a splash with his Italian wedding to 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk. The son of Ph.D's, he has long demonstrated a fascination with technology; back in high school in Denver he convinced Bell Labs to give him an internship typically only available to college upperclassman by calling them weekly for five months. He later studied chemical engineering at Cornell and earned an M.B.A. at Columbia. Smith was an executive at Kraft before moving to Goldman. (For more on Smith check out this new Forbes feature.)
26. George Bishop
$2.4 billion
Age 78
The Woodlands
#279 on the Forbes 400
In late 2013, in one of the great deals of the American oil boom, George Bishop's little-known GeoSouthern Energy sold 82,000 acres in the Eagle Ford shale of Texas to Devon Energy for $6 billion cash. After payouts to partners and investors like Blackstone, Bishop is believed to have cleared at least $1.5 billion from the deal. After the subsequent slide in oil prices, the value of that land is now a lot less. GeoSouthern, which Bishop founded in 1981, still has plenty of other oil and gas fields along the Gulf Coast. Bishop, who is very private, also owns the Eagleford Restaurant in Cuero, Texas and is a partner in the River Ridge Golf Club, west of Houston. Last year Bishop bought the Chub Cay island resort in the Bahamas.
27. Tilman Fertitta
$2.3 billion
Age 58
Houston
#293 on the Forbes 400
Tilman Fertitta is the CEO, chairman and owner of Landry's, which owns and operates 500 restaurant including chains like Saltgrass Steak House, Joe's Crab Shack, Rainforest Cafe and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Fertitta first learned the food business in Galveston where he worked at his father's seafood restaurant after school. He was a partner in the first Landry's restaurant in 1980 and bought a controlling interest in the company in 1986. Landry's went public in 1993, then private again nearly 20 years later in a $1.4 billion deal. He also owns the Golden Nugget Casinos, Houston's Kemah Boardwalk and the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio. And a Bentley and Rolls Royce dealership in Houston.
28. W. Herbert Hunt
$2.3 billion
Age 86
Dallas
#293 on the Forbes 400
The son of famed wildcatter H.L. Hunt (d. 1974), Herbert tried to corner the world's silver market with brother Nelson Bunker Hunt (d. 2014). When the price of silver collapsed in the 1980s, the brothers fell off The Forbes 400 and eventually went bankrupt. After decades of rebuilding, he returned to the 400 in 2013 after his Petro-Hunt sold a big chunk of its acreage in the Bakken oilfields of North Dakota to Halcon Resources for $1.5 billion in cash and stock. He's since ridden those shares of Halcon down with the price of oil from $750 million to just $75 million.
29. Gerald Ford
$2.1 billion
Age 71
Dallas
#327 on the Forbes 400
Gerald Ford made a fortune buying and selling banks, purchasing one nearly every 3 years for decades. His latest purchase was a majority stake in California-based Mechanics Bank that he picked up in late April through his co-managed Ford Financial. Son of a Texas farmer, he bought his first bank for $1.2 million in 1975 and later sold it for $80 million. His biggest score came in 2002 when he and fellow billionaire Ron Perelman sold California's Golden State Bancorp to Citigroup for $6 billion in stock. Today he sits on the board of lottery and gambling outfit Scientific Games with Perelman. In 2013 he committed $15 million to Southern Methodist University, where he got his undergrad and law degrees. That was on top of $20 million he'd given in 1997 to fund the construction of a new football stadium. Ford and his wife Kelli, an interior designer who owns a decorating firm with her sister, have homes in Dallas and the Hamptons, a working ranch in New Mexico, and a thoroughbred farm in Kentucky. He also has office buildings in Charlotte, Denver, Nashville, shopping centers in Dallas, apartments in Houston.
30. Sid Bass
$2 billion
Age 72
Fort Worth
#342 on the Forbes 400
Sid and his three brothers inherited a small fortune from their oil tycoon uncle Sid Richardson four decades ago and have since turned it into a big one, running oil company Bass Operating and leveraging investing talent from the likes of Richard Rainwater and David Bonderman. Ultra-private, the Basses are among the hardest billionaire families to pin down, and could be sitting on considerably more capital than we give them credit for. Sid has been laying low since his late 2011 divorce from super-socialite second wife Mercedes. Details of their settlement are unknown, though assumed to be in the range of $300 million. Rumor is, Sid was more interested in pursuing his painting hobby in Fort Worth than going to the opera in New York, and never wanted to wear a tux again. His mother Nancy Lee Bass died in March, aged 95--just one day after the passing of her best friend and neighbor, the pianist Van Cliburn. In 1991, she and husband Perry Bass (d. 2006) celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by donating $1 million each to 50 charities.
31. Edward Bass
$2 billion
Age 70
Fort Worth
#342 on the Forbes 400
Ed Bass loves to spend money on his home town Fort Worth. The Texas city will soon be home to a new 14,000-seat arena, after Bass has lead the drive to pledge $225 million from private donors, leaving tax payers with only half the tab for the $450 million investment. Bass has also helped shape downtown Fort Worth and its central Sundance Square, which is home to the $65 million Bass Performance Hall, which opened in 1998 and boasts some of the best acoustics in the world. Once called "a Texas-bred cross between Prince Charles and Lorenzo de Medici," Ed is the Renaissance man among the Bass brothers. He shares investments in oil and gas, with his brothers and owns ranches in Texas and Flint Hills of Kansas; and is devoted to seeding with native grasses. He also loves architecture and urban planning; in the early 1990s he spent $200 million backing Biosphere 2, a self-contained living experiment in Arizona that he later donated to Columbia University. Waxing philosophical during a press conference for Sundance Square, he once said, "Wealth is not, you know, a matter of money. It is a matter of being able to forwardly organize our lives in a positive way."
32. Lee Bass
$2 billion
Age 59
Fort Worth
#342 on the Forbes 400
Lee Bass is the youngest of the four Bass brothers and is believed to hold the reins of the family oil and gas companies which has been drilling in west Texas and eastern New Mexico for decades. After fracking technology turned the area into a boom region over the last decade, falling oil prices has put a dent in the brothers fortune, originally inherited from oil tycoon uncle Sid Richardson. A devoted outdoorsman, Lee has been instrumental in protecting rhinoceroses worldwide, and is responsible for bringing critically endangered rhinos to the Fort Worth Zoo. Lee spent 12 years as commissioner of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. His El Coyote ranch in south Texas is home to an elite herd of Texas longhorn cattle. In 1991 Lee donated $20 million to alma mater Yale for a new program in Western Civilization. After outcry against Lee's insistence that he get to approve the program's professors, Yale canceled the program and returned the donation.
33. Timothy Headington
$1.9 billion
Age 65
Dallas
#358 on Forbes 400
He made his fortune in the oil business, selling his Bakken oil fields to XTO Energy in 2008 for $1.85 billion. After that, Tim Headington plunged into a bigger passion: moviemaking. Teamed with legendary film producer Graham King, he bankrolled some hugely expensive but Oscar-winning films like "Hugo" and "Rango" and found big success with smaller stakes in Brad Pitt's "World War Z" and Best Picture "Argo." Headington has since backed away from the movies for now, and is instead dedicated to making his mark on Dallas -- having assembled a huge land position downtown and recently completed a lavish expansion of his boutique hotel Joule. Headington has grand dreams for bigger hotel/condo projects. A couple years ago his own Miami condo sold for $25 million. Inspired by his geologist father, Headington founded Headington Oil in 1978. He stayed under the radar until that 2008 sale. Still investing in oil, the big dip in his net worth this year is due to the oil price bust. After Oklahoma University, Headington earned graduate degrees in theology and psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. His nascent Headington Institute aims to give psychological training to humanitarian relief workers worldwide.
34. Fayez Sarofim
$1.85 billion
Age 86
Houston
#372 on the Forbes 400
Octogenarian investment manager Fayez Sarofim is keeping active. He still doubles as the chairman and CEO of his money management firm, Fayez Sarofim & Co. He pledged $70 million toward a $450 million redevelopment of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, part of which will be dubbed the the Fayez S. Sarofim Campus. Sarofim, nicknamed "The Sphinx," got married in January 2015, at age of 85, to philanthropist Susan Krohn, mother-in-law of his son Phillip (and ex-wife of one-time Rich Lister oilman Tracy Krohn). Sarofim was one of the first investors in energy pipeline firm Kinder Morgan. He stepped down as director at the time of the firm's second IPO in 2011. The son of a wealthy Egyptian cotton farmer, he received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School before starting his own investment firm in 1958. He made his fortune as a buy-and-hold specialist with long-term investments in Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble. Fayez Sarofim & Co. currently has $30 billion in assets under management. He sits on the board of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as well as the Texas Heart Institute.
35. Drayton McLane, Jr.
$1.8 billion
Age 79
Temple, TX
#375 on the Forbes 400
Drayton McLane got his alliances tested in January 2015 as his two alma maters, Baylor University and Michigan State, went head-to-head in the college football classic Cotton Bowl -- Michigan State came out on top. Both teams play in stadiums named after McLane, honoring his donations: $200 million to Baylor University in Texas in 2012, and $4.3 million to Michigan State in 2008. The former Houston Astros owner is fighting allegations that he misrepresented the value of the Major League Baseball team when he sold it in 2011 to investment manager Jim Crane for $610 million. The deal includes a stake in Comcast SportsNet Houston, and Crane alleges that the subscriber figures and business model projections were faulty. McLane denies this and is appealing bankruptcy court's decision to return the case to Texas state court. McLane began his career in 1959 loading trucks in his family's grocery distribution center on the night shift. Over the next thirty years he built the McLane Company into an international operation. In 1991 he sold the company to friend and tennis partner Sam Walton for $50 million and 10.4 million shares of Wal-Mart stock; Wal-Mart sold the company to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003 for $1.45 billion.
With reporting by Dan Alexander, Agustino Fontevecchia, Max Jedeur-Palmgren, Alex Morrell, Andrea Murphy, Chase Peterson-Winthorn, Jane Roberts, Katia Savchuk, Chloe Sorvino and Jennifer Wang.
