34. Nicolas Berggruen

NET WORTH: $2.2 billion
AGE: 59
RESIDENCE: Holmby Hills
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Private equity
LAST YEAR: $1.8 billion
CHANGE: +22%

THE MONEY: An investor and philanthropist, Berggruen manages his family fortune through Berggruen Holdings Inc., the direct investment vehicle of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. His diverse portfolio includes investments in for-profit education, hotels, publishing and health care companies, and he is a frequent angel investor in tech startups. He also has a large global real estate portfolio. Berggruen is a prodigious collector of contemporary art and has collected 12 prominent artists with a promise to donate the collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Berggruen serves as a trustee.

THE BUZZ: Berggruen, a German American dual citizen, founded his Berggruen Institute think tank in 2010 to design systems of good governance. In fall 2019, the institute presented its fourth annual Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture of $1 million to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His plans to build a campus for the institute on a 450-acre mountaintop site in Brentwood, purchased for a reported $45 million, continue to draw community opposition. Once nicknamed the “Homeless Billionaire,” Berggruen today owns several properties in Los Angeles, including a 1930s Holmby Hills mansion he bought for $41 million in 2017.

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