Chasing Zeros

The Forbes wealth editor sheds light on what makes the mega-rich tick.

LUISA KROLL ’91

PETER KILMARX ’83

CHRISTINE SOUFFRANT ’11

| MIKE MARKAVERICH ’71

| LAUREN INDVIK ’09

JEFF ALBRIGHT ’88, DMS’92

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg? About $45 billion. That’s an easy one for Kroll, who, as Forbes magazine’s assistant man- aging editor of wealth, oversees the famed “Forbes 400” and “World’s Billionaires” lists. “It’s kind of a bizarre niche to have,” she says.

It’s also one Kroll dearly loves: For nearly two decades she’s tracked the megarich around the globe—once spending the night on a $300-million yacht. Yet for her it’s not merely about chronicling affluent lifestyles. “The truth is that a small group of insanely wealthy people control an al- most unimaginable swath of the world’s economy and political discourse,” she tells DAM. “I can help shed light on who these people are, how they made their fortunes and how they use their money to influence society, for both good and bad.” Indeed, Kroll gets most excited telling rags-to-riches tales. One of her most memorable is about Luxottica’s Leonardo Del Vecchio, who grew up in an Italian orphan- age and lost part of a

finger in a factory. “I love how some come from so little,” she says.

Kroll also appreciates a good comeback. She recently returned from a trip to Iceland, where she trailed that nation’s first billionaire, Thor Bjorgolfsson. He regained his 10-figure fortune after nearly losing it all in the 2008 financial crisis, during which he was criticized

for helping to bring about Iceland’s economic collapse. “His story is worthy of his country’s famous sagas, filled with history, drama, intense rivalries and all sorts of ac- cusations of wrongdoing,” she says.

Through the years Kroll has been amazed by how many tycoons care deeply about where they’re ranked by Forbes. “These are tremendously ambitious, successful people,” she says. “To them, this is just one more measure of how they’ve succeeded.” She sometimes finds herself lobbied by the planet’s most prosperous. She recalls how one bil- lionaire flew his company’s chief financial officer to New York City, instructing him not to leave until she assigned him a higher net worth. “I finally convinced the guy to go home,” she says. “We didn’t end up changing it.”

Kroll notes that these lists are massive reporting ef- forts, with dozens of staffers diving into piles of records to reach the most accurate assessments. To get at the truth she has no problem asking a magnate to put his money where his mouth is. When one insisted that her estimate was incorrect because he really had billions more in cash, Kroll asked him to prove it by sending in his bank state- ments. “I heard afterward that he was quite offended by our questioning, but in the end he produced the docu- ments,” she says.

Nine Dartmouth alumni are currently listed among Forbes’ almost 2,000 billionaires, ranging from private equity guru Leon Black ’73 (No. 283, with a net worth of $5.3 billion) to real estate investor Steven Roth ’62 (No. 1,741, with a net worth of $1 billion).

The daughter of an investment banker, Kroll grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and attended Choate Rosemary Hall before Dartmouth. “My parents belonged to a country club where a number of ‘Forbes 400’ members belong,” Kroll says. “I always saw them as normal people.”

Still, she recognizes the differences between the super- wealthy and, well, everyone else, laughing about the time colorful GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons (net worth: $1.8 billion) invited her to a motorcycle rally. “To get to that level of success you’re probably a little more extreme in some respects than the rest of us,” she says.

“Some of these people have everything in the world, yet they really care about the impression they’re making.”

heather Salerno is a freelance writer based in the greater New York City area.