Our flagship Forbes 400 comes out once a year. But throughout the year our reporters meet with the
list candidates and their handlers and interview employees, rivals, attorneys, ex-spouses and securities analysts. We keep track of their moves:
the deals they negotiate, the land they're selling, the paintings they're buying, the causes they give to. Securities & Exchange Commission documents, court records, probate records, tax records, federal financial disclosures and Web and print stories--we dig through them all. In calculating wealth, we put a price on all assets, including stakes in public and privately held companies, real estate, art, yachts and planes. For the first time, this year we have also systematically collected data on billionaires' eight different categories of passions and pursuits. In these pages we call out these personal interests with icons next to people's names, space allowing. (A complete list is available at
The Richest People in America - Forbes.com.)
When we value this crowd, we take a hard look at debt. Not that we pretend to know what is listed on everyone's private balance sheet, though some folks do provide that information. Our estimates of public fortunes are a snapshot of wealth on Aug. 25, when we locked in net worths and ranking. Some on our list will become richer or poorer within weeks--even days--of publication.
Privately held companies are valued by coupling estimates of revenues or profits with prevailing price-to-revenues or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies. We have not included dispersed fortunes (as in those of the Du Ponts and Kennedys) when individual net worths are below our minimum. But we do include wealth belonging to a member's immediate relatives if the wealth can ultimately be traced to one living individual; in that case "& family" indicates that the number shown includes money belonging to more than one person.
