Five years to the week after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, "the wealthiest as a group have finally gained back all that they lost." Finally! (Everyone else is still fucked.) But in Los Angeles, the rich people are rather less wealthy than the rich people in places like Northern California or New York or Omaha, Nebraska. Forbes has just released its list of old white dude headshots positioned next to imaginary numbers, aka the Forbes 400 list of the Richest People in America, and the first entrant from Los Angeles doesn't come in until number 45. (That'd be pharmaceutical king Patrick Soon-Shiong, LA's perennially richest man/Brentwood compound-builder.) Not like "hometown" really means a lot in the world of billionaires--number three Larry Ellison supposedly resides in Woodside, but owns most of the island of Lanai and a solid percentage of Malibu--but still, why is it that LA seems so billions-poor in comparison to other places on the list? Well, probably because the tech and financial services industries aren't based here and it's not the childhood home of a member of the Walton family? Anyway, here are Los Angeles's top five richest dudes (always dudes!), as of today:
5. Sumner Redstone
Number on the list: 71
Worth: $5.8 billion
4. David Geffen
Number on the list: 68
Worth: $6 billion
3. Elon Musk
Number on the list: 61
Worth: $6.7 billion
2. Eli Broad
Number on the list: 59
Worth: $6.9 billion
1. Patrick Soon-Shiong
Number on the list: 45
Worth: $9 billion
· The Forbes 400 [Forbes]
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