Net Worth: $2 B

LAST YEAR: $2.2 B
CHANGE: -9.5%
AGE: 74
RESIDENCE: Bel Air
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Telecommunications, technology, real estate, financial services

THE MONEY: Winnick began building his fortune in the 1970s at investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he was a senior vice president working with Michael Milken’s high-yield bond team. Winnick went on to help build two major health care groups, HCA Healthcare Inc. and Tenet Healthcare Corp. He built Global Crossing in the late 1990s, a company that established one of the world’s first privately financed fiber optic networks. Winnick earned much of his wealth through the sale of $734 million worth of stock in Global Crossing. Today, he is chairman of Winnick & Co., a private investment firm and family office he founded in 1985.

THE BUZZ: Having rocketed to billionaire status in the 1990s through pioneering investments in fiber optic networks, Winnick’s sights seem set on repeating history with the wireless spectrum. Winnick & Co. has been aggressively pursuing wireless spectrum licenses globally and domestically. Through its subsidiary WCO Spectrum, Winnick & Co. has placed more than $1 billion in offers across 15 different entities for 2.5GHz spectrum licenses that T-Mobile is currently leasing for its 5G network, according to an Informa report.