- Walmart heir Rob Walton has left the retailer’s board of directors after four decades.
- He and his two siblings have added more than $100 billion to their net worth in recent years.
- Their gains were fueled by shares of Walmart, which hit a record high in March.
Walmart heir Rob Walton has left the retailer’s board of directors after four decades. He and his two siblings have more than doubled their money since 2016, adding more than $100 billion to their combined fortune.
The three surviving children of legendary founder Sam Walton – Rob, Jim and Alice – all feature prominently on the Forbes rich list with personal fortunes between $72 billion and $79 billion. They were half as rich in 2016.
They are now worth a total of $228 billion, making the three of them richer than the first three people on the list: Bernard Arnault ($214 billion), Jeff Bezos ($195 billion) or Elon Musk ($192 billion). billions of dollars).
Their wealth has exploded in recent years thanks to Walmart shares, which went from less than $20 in 2016 to more than $60.
It has already jumped 14% this year, fueled by resilient consumer demand and investors’ hopes that interest rates will fall and the economy will escape a recession.
The Walton trio have raked in more than $45 billion in total from stock sales and dividends over the years, according to Bloomberg. Along with other family members, they own more than 1.25 billion shares, or more than 45 percent of the company, a stake valued at more than $220 billion.
The Walton family as a whole was worth an estimated $267 billion as of mid-January, according to a Forbes ranking of America’s richest families. They were more than twice as rich as the Mars Dynasty.
It’s striking that Walmart’s founding family owns such a large share of a public company worth nearly $500 billion and has multiple board members.
Many very wealthy families prefer to keep their businesses private. This is the case for Mars, Koch Industries, Cargill, Fidelity, Publix, Chick-fil-A and others.
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