Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction), has a net worth of $166 billion, up $20 billion this year. That makes him the eighth richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire list.
The secret of the rise is simple. Ballmer kept a large portion of his shares in Microsoft when he left the company in 2014. At the time, he had been the chief executive officer for 14 years. He was also one of the first people Bill Gates hired after he started the company.
Today, Ballmer owns 4% of Microsoft, which makes him the company’s largest individual shareholder. Microsoft has a market value of $3.56 trillion. That makes it the fourth most valuable company in the world, just behind Alphabet and ahead of Amazon.
The huge increase in Ballmer’s net worth is due largely to Microsoft’s stock being up 124% in the past five years. The S&P 500 is 88% higher in the same period.
A much smaller portion of Ballmer’s net worth is based on his ownership of the L.A. Clippers. He bought the team for $2 billion in 2014. According to Forbes, the team is worth $7.5 billion today.
Finally, Ballmer gets $1 billion in dividends each year from Microsoft holdings. The forward yield is only 0.76%, but he owns 333 million shares.
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