Inside Betsy DeVos’ Billions: Just How Rich Is The Education Secretary?
This is the fifth in a series that explores the personal fortunes of President Trump’s cabinet officials. See more on Mike Pence, William Barr, Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross.
Among Donald Trump’s historically rich cabinet members, Betsy DeVos is the richest. But for more than two years, the extent of her finances has been a mystery. Now Forbes has zeroed in on the root of the DeVos family fortune, Amway, to come up with what we believe is the most realistic estimate of the size of her fortune published so far. Together, Betsy DeVos, her husband and their four adult children are worth roughly $2 billion.
The key to untangling DeVos’ empire appears to lie in Securities and Exchange Commission filings from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Amway’s Asia-Pacific business operated through a publicly traded subsidiary. Those documents indicate that Betsy’s husband Dick DeVos and his three siblings had equal interests in the subsidiary, an indication that they equally split their ownership of the rest of Amway. Given that his parents have both passed away and the DeVos family continues to own half of the business, it seems reasonable to assume that Betsy, her husband and their kids now control one quarter of the family’s stake, or about 12% of Amway. That share is worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
Assuming they also own 25% of the family’s second-largest asset, the Orlando Magic basketball team, that’s another $300 million or so. Their slice of the family’s portfolio of commercial real estate, private equity investments, mansions and yachts makes up the rest of the education secretary’s net worth.
Betsy's Billons
Betsy DeVos is the richest member of Donald Trump's cabinet. She, her husband and their four adult children are worth an estimated $2 billion—mostly in Amway stock.
Betsy, the daughter of auto parts magnate Edgar Prince and sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, owes the vast majority of her fortune to her marriage to Dick DeVos. His father, Richard DeVos Sr., cofounded Amway in 1959 alongside his high school friend, Jay Van Andel. What began as two buddies selling an all-purpose cleaner door-to-door quickly grew into an army of independent salespeople hawking vitamins, soaps and other household goods to friends and family—and, controversially, earning money by signing others up as distributors too. Dick DeVos ran the company from 1993 to 2002. Today one DeVos (Dick’s brother Doug) and one Van Andel co-chair the board. The families split ownership 50/50, according to a spokesperson of the DeVos family. CONTINUE READING: Inside Betsy DeVos’ Billions: Just How Rich Is The Education Secretary?
