In Memoriam: The 31 Billionaires Who Died Over The Past Year

Forbes

05-04-2025

The founder of HBO, a Macau casino magnate and one of the greatest hedge fund managers of all-time are among the three dozen billionaires who have died over the past year.
In all, 31 members of Forbes' 2024 World's Billionaires have passed away since last year's ranking. As a group, they were worth $207 billion in aggregate on last year's list. They amassed their immense wealth all over the world, but mainly in the United States, which accounts for ten of the deceased, followed by 3 from the Netherlands and 2 each from Hong Kong, Spain, Canada and China.
Nearly all of them made it into their 80s, on average living 85 years, though the deceased include two in their early 60s and 11 who made it into their 90s.
The founder and chairman of international fashion retail empire Mango was born in Istanbul but moved to Barcelona with his family in the 1960s. He opened his first clothing store in Barcelona in 1984, naming it after the national fruit of the Philippines, which he'd recently discovered on a trip to the country. Andic's son and presumptive heir Jonathan (b.1981) sits on the board of Mango, which generated $3.6 billion of revenue in 2024. Andic reportedly died from a fall while hiking that is being investigated by authorities.
The private equity pioneer founded Texas Pacific Group in 1992 with Jim Coulter, who he met while working for billionaire Robert Bass. Their first big deal in 1993 was a $66 million investment in faltering Continental Airlines, which ultimately made them a $640 million profit. Over the next three decades, the pair built TPG into a publicly traded investment giant with nearly $250 billion of assets under management. Bonderman also helped bring an NHL team, the Kraken, to Seattle in 2021.
Lui Che Woo founded and chaired Hong Kong-listed casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group, which opened its first casino in Macau in 2006, the year Macau overtook Las Vegas as the biggest gambling market in the world. His eldest son, Francis, took the reins of Galaxy from Lui in 2012, and the company now has a market capitalization of more than $17 billion. In 2015, Lui donated $1.2 billion to endow his charitable foundation and the Lui Che Woo Prize, which is awarded to individuals and organisations 'striving for harmony and the benefit of humankind.'
A television titan, Dolan grew up in Cleveland, served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, then got his start stitching together sports highlight reels for local stations. He founded the predecessor to HBO in 1965, smartly betting that viewers would pay extra for premium content without ads—then traded it for a Long Island TV company he built into giant Cablevision and sold to Altice in 2016 in a $17.7 billion deal. His wife of 73 years, Helen, died in 2023; his heirs still own big stakes in the public companies that control AMC Networks, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, which his son James runs.
Escarrer acquired his first hotel in Spain in 1956 at the age of 21 and went on to build Melia Hotels International into one of the world's largest hotel chains, with more than 350 properties in 35 countries. He was succeeded as chairman in 2023 by his son Gabriel Escarrer Jaume, who now oversees the family's more than 50% stake in the publicly traded company.
Xu Gang founded titanium dioxide pigment maker LB Group in 1955 and took it public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2011. At the time of his death, he was serving as honorary chairman of the company, which now boasts a market capitalization of nearly $6 billion
Goldschmeding founded staffing company Randstad Holding, which now has branches in 38 countries. In 2016, the firm paid more than $400 million to acquire the U.S.-based job hunting site Monster.com. Goldschmeding started Randstad in 1960 as Uitzendbureau Amstelveen; he took the company public in 1990 before retiring in 1998.
Donald R. Horton founded homebuilder D.R. Horton in 1978. He studied to be a pharmacist at Oklahoma University, then joined his father's real estate brokerage before striking out on his own. He built his first house in Fort Worth, Texas, then expanded regionally and, eventually, across the U.S. He took D.R. Horton public in 1992 and built it into America's largest homebuilder by volume by 2002. Horton was chairman of the business at the time of his death and, with his family, owned more than 10% of its shares.
Oil magnate W. Herbert Hunt was one of legendary wildcatter H.L. Hunt's 15 children. H.L.'s eighth child, he studied geology at Washington and Lee University before joining the family business. He owned a refinery in Louisiana and oil company Petro-Hunt, and developed real estate in Texas, Arizona and California. With brother Nelson Bunker Hunt (d. 2014), he tried to corner the world silver market in 1980, but failed when the price of the metal collapsed 80%.
Arthur Irving was an oil and gas magnate behind the filling station and refinery company Irving Oil. A third-generation member of a Canadian dynasty, his grandfather, James Dergavel Irving, started the family business in the late 1800s. His dad Kenneth Colin (K.C.) Irving added oil operations in the 1920s. Arthur and his two brothers divided up the empire after K.C.'s death in 1992. Arthur joined Irving Oil in 1953 and took over as president in 1972, growing the company's Saint John refinery into Canada's largest and expanding the business internationally. He was chancellor of Acadia University, his alma mater, from 1996 to 2010, and was a donor to education and healthcare causes.
Arthur's brother, James Irving owned J.D. Irving, a conglomerate with more than two dozen companies in frozen foods, retail, shipbuilding, transportation and more. James' timber and forestry operation, based in New Brunswick, has planted more than a billion trees since 1957.
Knapp cofounded what would become one of Europe's largest fashion companies, New Yorker GmbH, with a single store in the German town of Flensburg in 1971. He served as managing partner until his death, overseeing the nearly $2 billion (revenue) business' expansion to 1,200 stores in 47 countries. His daughter Sophie Knapp serves as the company's deputy chairwoman.
A Harvard Business School grad and former oil trader, Krishnan built a multibillion-dollar empire from scratch, acquiring stakes in the likes of telecom outfit Maxis, media firm Astro Malaysia Holdings and oilfield services-provider Bumi Armada. He would have been even richer if it hadn't been for his estimated $7 billion investment in Indian telecom firm Aircel, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018. Krishnan was also known for his philanthropy, which led Newsweek to call him 'Live Aid's Shy Tycoon' after he helped raise funding for the famous benefit concert in 1985.
Wu Li-gann was the founder of WUS Printed Circuit, a printed-circuit board manufacturer he started in Taipei in 1972 before moving the business to China twenty years later. WUS went public in 2010, and its customers now include artificial intelligence, automobile and telecommunications companies.
Judy Love cofounded Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores in 1964, launching the truck stop and convenience store chain with her husband Tom (d. 2023). The couple leased their first gas station in Watonga, Oklahoma using a $5,000 loan from Tom's parents. Judy kept the books and ran the company until 1975, when she returned to college. Her four children now own the company, which employs nearly 40,000 people across more than 650 locations in 42 states. She was inadvertently included on Forbes' 2025 ranking.
Lozick inherited an estimated 65% stake in Swagelok, a valve-making business her father, Fred Lennon, cofounded in 1947. Lennon (d. 1998) left his son, John Lennon, a much smaller inheritance ($25 million) than his daughter, prompting John's son William to sue Lozick and her trustees in 2002, exposing the details of the family's finances. Lozick settled the suit, agreeing to pay each of Lennon's grandchildren an additional $1.25 million.
Born to Russian immigrant parents, Marcus cofounded Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, with fellow billionaire Arthur Blank after they were both fired from their jobs at a regional hardware chain. Marcus and his wife Billie have given away nearly $2 billion to date to charitable organizations focused on medical care, veterans and Jewish causes. They were part of the first group of 40 people to sign The Giving Pledge in 2010 and have committed to donating about 90% of their wealth to charity within 20 years of Marcus' death.
A chemical engineer from MIT, Mariwala was one of the largest shareholders of his family's publicly traded Indian consumer goods outfit Marico, which his billionaire nephew, Harsh Mariwala, built and chairs. Kishore Mariwala sat on the board of Marico's non-profit arm, the Marico Innovation Foundation.
McMurtry cofounded the engineering and scientific technology company Renishaw—which supplies high-tech laser components used by drones and self-driving cars, and metal 3D printers used to make medical implants and teeth—in 1973. Two decades later, Queen Elizabeth made him a Commander of the Order to the British Empire for his contributions to British science and technology in 1994. McMurtry retired as Renishaw's CEO in 2018 and left its board in 2024.
Tadako Nakatani was the widow of Taro Nakatani, who founded medical testing equipment maker Sysmex as a subsidiary of electrical equipment maker Toa Electric in 1968. Taro, who died in 1984, led Toa's efforts to research, develop and manufacture medical equipment in the early 1960s. The company is run by the Nakatanis' son-in-law Hisashi Ietsugu, who joined the firm in 1986 and became president a decade later. Sysmex, which went public on the Osaka Stock Exchange in 1995 and the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1996, generated $3 billion of revenue in fiscal 2024.
Paul "Tony" Novelly was an oil & gas mogul who owned St. Louis, Missouri-based Apex Oil, a petroleum products distribution, storage and transportation firm. He joined the company in 1969 and rose to become CEO. The firm filed for bankruptcy in 1987 and Novelly became the sole owner after it emerged from bankruptcy in the early 1990s. He stepped down as CEO of Apex Oil in 2022, handing over the reins to his son, Paul Novelly II.
As a teenager, Paulmann moved from his native Germany to Chile after World War II and founded what would become supermarket giant Cencosud in 1976. He served as president until 2021 and built an $8 billion (market capitalization) business with operations in five Latin American countries, the U.S., China and Uruguay. His daughter Heike Paulmann succeeded him as president of Cencosud.
He built the Argentinian energy conglomerate Perez Companc and sold it to Brazilian energy giant Petrobas for $1 billion in 2002. Seven years later, he retired from active involvement in business and gave his 75% stake in Argentinian food giant Molinos Rio de la Plata to his children. Also known for his philanthropy, he founded his family's Perez Companc Foundation after the eldest of his eight kids died in a car accident in the 1980s.
The founder of Hong Kong property giant Henderson Land Development was ranked by Forbes as Asia's richest person (and the world's fourth wealthiest individual) in 1996, after growing up in a poor family that could afford to eat fish or meat only twice a month. Lee founded Henderson Land in 1976, when Hong Kong was facing a shortage of affordable housing, and stepped down as chairman in 2019, appointing his sons, Martin and Peter, as co-chairmen.
Shen Wenrong was chairman of Shagang Group, China's largest non-state-owned steel company. He led the development of Shagang from a collective steel workshop founded in 1975 before stepping down as chairman in 2016 and handing over the reins to his son, Shen Bin.
A mathematics Ph.D., Simons worked as a codebreaker during the Vietnam War and chaired the math department at Stony Brook University in the 1960s and 1970s. He founded hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in 1982 and pioneered the quantitative trading revolution with its flagship Medallion Fund. Simons retired from Renaissance in 2010, but remained an investor in its funds. He gave some $6 billion to philanthropic causes during his lifetime, alongside his wife Marilyn, with a focus on mathematical and scientific research.
Snow was the executive chairman of Capital Airport Group, which operates Canberra Airport in his hometown of Canberra, Australia. He invested more than $2 billion developing the airport and building office and industrial parks on the 1,062 acres of surrounding land. He paid just $40 million for a 99-year lease on the airport in 1998.
The oil and gas tycoon founded what became Endeavor Energy Resources in 1979 after growing up on a farm in Texas and studying petroleum energy at the University of Texas at Austin. The privately held oil exploration and production giant spanned some 410,000 net acres, mainly in Texas, at the time of Stephens' death. He agreed to sell Endeavor to rival Diamondback Energy in February 2024 for approximately $26 billion in cash and stock.
Sutardja cofounded semiconductor company Marvell Technology with his wife, Weili Dai, in 1995. He was CEO of the company until he and Dai were forced out in 2016 amid an internal accounting investigation, though no evidence of fraud was ultimately found. The couple moved to Las Vegas in 2017 and invested in real estate and technology. At the time of his death, Sutardja was an executive director of Alphawave IP Group–known as Alphawave Semi, a U.K.-listed AI semiconductor firm.
Considered one of Greece's most influential business leaders, Vardinoyannis cofounded petroleum company Motor Oil Hellas in 1970 and took it public on the Athens Stock Exchange in 2001. His oldest son, Yannis, is vice chairman of the $2.6 billion (market capitalization) company, while his nephew, Nikos, is also a major shareholder. A friend of the Kennedys, Vardinoyannis survived an assassination attempt involving car bombs and rocket launchers by the Greek far-left militant group 'November 17' in 1990.
An Israeli industrial titan who focused on creating peace between Israel and Palestine, Wertheimer built industrial parks, or "capitalist kibbutzes," in disadvantaged and predominantly Arab regions of Israel in order to promote job creation. He sold his metal-cutting company ISCAR to Berkshire Hathaway for more than $6 billion in 2006 and 2013, and founded, and later sold his majority stake in, jet-engine blade maker Blades Technology. He died in March 2025, after Forbes finalized its World's Billionaires list, and thus appears on the ranks.