Peter Buck, Subway founder and nuclear physicist, worked on nuclear reactors for the US Navy
Most of us have eaten at Subway as it is a multinational fast food company that has been in business for 60 years. The restaurant boasts 37,000 locations worldwide, over 400,000 employees and has revenues usually in the tens of billions of dollars. We have seen Subway plugged in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore and in the Muppets Most Wanted to TV shows such as Chuck and Hawaii 5-0. However, teeing off a Subway sandwich is an art of its own that only Sandler could pull off. You will be surprised to know how the company was founded. Peter Buck, one of the co-founders, lived an interesting life from a physicist to an entrepreneur. On his way to restaurant success, he studied physics earning a PhD in the subject from Columbia University to working at General Electric and United Nuclear. While at GE, he worked at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, which is dedicated to supporting the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. The program, also known as Naval Reactors, oversees and is responsible for the safe and reliable operation of the United States Navy's nuclear reactors from 'womb to tomb.' While Buck was at the atomic laboratory, he performed tests and calculations on atomic power plants being developed for US Navy submarines and ships. Buck left the laboratory and worked at United Nuclear and Nuclear Enegegy Services before stepping into being a restauranteur.
In 1965, he partnered with Fred DeLuca by loaning him $1,000 to open a sub shop. Buck and DeLuca formed 'Doctor's Associates' to manage the new and growing business. They met challenges as their two shops were not financially successful. However, they pressed forward. By the early 1970s, they had 16 locations throughout Connecticut and in 1974 they began franchising restaurants. The first franchise opened in Wallingford, CT, in 197,6 and the first Subway on the West Coast opened in 1978 in Fresno, CA. Subway opened its first international location in 1986 in Bahrain and opened its first UK location in Brighton in 1996. Subway has since partnered with Walmart supercenters by having restaurants at certain Walmart supercenter locations and the chain surpassed McDonald's locations partnered with Walmart in 2007.
By 2015, Buck was on the Forbes 400 list at number 261 for being one of the wealthiest people. His overall net worth was estimated at $1.6B. With his wealth, Buck turned to philanthropy, supporting such causes as education, journalism, medicine and land conservation. When he passed in 2021, Buck gave his 50% share in Subway to his philanthropy foundation, Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation (PCLB), which was estimated at around $5B. He also made donations to the Smithsonian Institution. Buck is survived by his children, Christopher and William. His second wife, Carmen, passed in 2003. Buck created a restaurant giant that offers fine-tasting sub sandwiches and healthy choices for people all over the world, which is an interesting end state for a sub shop co-founder by a US Navy physicist working on nuclear reactors. Who would have thought?
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Politico
43 minutes ago
- Politico
The PM finds his fixer
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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Inside The Global 2000: Trump's Tariffs Haven't Stopped The World's Growth… Yet
Donald Trump has used his first five months back in office to attack longtime allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, insisting the United States 'will no longer tolerate being ripped off.' His posture with trade partners has been more competitive than collaborative, imposing or threatening heavy-handed tariffs under the pretense that they're running up trade deficits to enrich themselves at Americans' expense. He's right that U.S. manufacturing jobs have sharply dropped since the turn of the century, gutting industrial cities across America's heartland that have in turn flocked to him in voting booths. But it's hard to make the case that globalization has been a zero-sum game. For the last 23 years, Forbes has compiled the Global 2000 list, ranking the world's 2,000 largest companies by revenue, profit, assets and market value, with equal weights for each of the four metrics. Twenty years ago, the 2,000 companies on the list combined to record $21.9 trillion in annual sales, $1.3 trillion in profit, $80.7 trillion in assets and $26.6 trillion in market value. Every half decade since, all of those numbers have steadily climbed, and this year's totals amount to records of $52.9 trillion in revenue, $4.9 trillion in profit, $242.2 trillion in assets and $91.3 trillion in market cap. Much of that astounding growth, including more than doubling in revenues has taken place in the U.S., where the S&P 500 index is up fivefold in the last two decades. It's home to Walmart, the company with the highest 12-month sales in the world, Alphabet, the world's most profitable company, and Apple, the most valuable company as of April 25, when the data used to rank the list was compiled. (Nvidia, No. 47 on our list, has since surpassed it, with a market value nearing $3.5 trillion). Now, leaders of many of the most prominent companies in the U.S. and around the world are fretting that a trade war could stunt that growth. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on its earnings call in May that 'higher tariffs will result in higher prices.' JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon devoted the majority of his annual letter to his macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns before even beginning to discuss his own company. 'America will be first—but not if it is alone,' Dimon wrote in a reference to Trump's 'America First' slogan. 'If the Western world's military and economic alliances were to fragment, America itself would inevitably weaken over time.' Last week at Forbes' annual Iconoclast Summit in New York, one of the world's greatest investors, billionaire Ken Griffin said the use of tariffs 'comes at a dear price to the U.S. consumer' and said 'shame on the administration' for criticizing McMillon in response to his comment about higher prices. Dimon's cautionary tone shouldn't be ignored. JPMorgan has been the number one company on Forbes' Global 2000 for the past three years. His bank's stock is up 30% in the past year, while the top 100 American companies on the list have gained, on average, 10.5% in market value, underperforming the top 100 companies outside of the United States by three percentage points. In fact, since Trump took office, the S&P 500, which has swung wildly, has gained a mere 0.59%, versus nearly 20% gains for stocks in Europe and China. Over the past 10 years, the top 100 U.S. stocks on our list have an average cumulative return of 488% versus 143% average return for the top 100 stocks outside the United States. As America's largest bank, with $4.4 trillion in assets, JPMorgan is the only company to rank in the top 20 worldwide in each of the four categories considered for the list. Berkshire Hathaway, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Saudi Aramco and Amazon make up the rest of the top five of the overall Global 2000. Five of the top eight firms on the list are banks, even as the 'magnificent seven' tech companies make up most of the most valuable companies in the world by market cap. Tech giants are generally lighter on assets and don't get as much credit for that variable. Naturally, banking is the most represented industry, with 328 banks ranging from JPMorgan to $43 billion (assets) Keiyo Bank in Japan represented. Another 134 companies classified as diversified financials made the cut, including Goldman Sachs (No. 20), Charles Schwab (No. 124) and Blackstone (No. 418). Tech is comparatively underrepresented, with 186 entrants distributed between the software and services, hardware and semiconductors categories. Of the 100 largest companies by assets in the world, 88 are banks, insurers or other financial institutions, giving them a built-in advantage. Banking profits have also been increasing for years thanks to high net interest margins in an environment with rising rates. While there hasn't been much movement at the top of Forbes' Global 2000, there were plenty of significant moves deeper into the list. Artificial intelligence chipmaker extraordinaire Nvidia moved into the top 100 for the first time, shooting up 63 slots to 47th to continue a fast rise through the rankings since its Global 2000 debut in 2006. Disney (71st) and Pfizer (73rd) are also back in the top 100 thanks to a profit rebound after sliding to No. 155 and No. 436 last year, though Pfizer's stock, with its $130 billion market cap, remains 60% lower than its pandemic-era record high in late 2021. Moving in the other direction, BP tumbled 374 spots to No. 421 because its profit fell from $9.2 billion to a mere $399 million, hampered by falling oil prices and unexpected refinery outages. Intel similarly plunged from 107th to 488th after booking an astonishing net loss of $19 billion in the last 12 months. The floundering Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has fallen well behind Nvidia in the AI arms race and has been unprofitable for five quarters in a row, reporting a $16.6 billion loss in last year's third quarter alone due to write-downs related to restructuring efforts that included laying off 15,000 employees and the depreciation of some manufacturing assets. In terms of overall numbers, the United States is still first by a wide margin, with 612 companies on the list headquartered here, a slight drop from 621 last year. China is next with 317 companies represented, including firms based in Hong Kong. In a slow year for IPOs, there aren't many notable newcomers to the list, but a handful include Smithfield Foods (No. 1,383), AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave (No. 1,799) and SiriusXM Holdings (No. 1,822), which spun off from Liberty Media last September. The highest-ranked new company to join the list is Irish firm Smurfit Westrock at 855th, a near 100-year old paper and packaging firm which formed as a result of a merger between Smurfit Kappa and Westrock last July. Bankers are hoping that Trump's promises of deregulation will lead to more mergers and IPOs, which could create more movement on next year's Global 2000, but if this year's chaotic policy announcements persist, profits for the whole list could come down as more cash gets siphoned into governments' coffers due to tariffs. The U.S. remains the world's most powerful economy, and it's up to Trump and Congress to decide whether what is effectively the tax revenue from government heavy-handedness on trade deals, is worth sacrificing the economic gains the United States and its allies have long benefited from due to globalization.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
The World's Largest Retailers 2025: Amazon Tops List Of Global Retailers Ahead Of Tariff Impact
Tariffs are all anyone in retail can talk about. But as global retailers prepare for higher prices and decreased consumer spending the world's largest companies can bank on a past year of growth. Jeff Bezos' Amazon ranked fifth in Forbes' Global 2000 and reigned up top for retailers for the second year in a row after being briefly displaced by Walmart in 2023. The company saw a healthy growth in overall sales to $638 billion, up 8% from last year. Holding strong are competitors Walmart (18), Alibaba (33), Home Depot (67) and Costco (93), which round up the five largest retailers on the Global 2000. Forbes uses data from FactSet research to create its annual list of the largest public companies based on assets, market value, sales and profit. Companies are ranked over their market value as of April 25, 2025. All largely benefitted from the increase in consumer spending over the year, which rose 5.2% to $724.1 billion from April 2024 to April 2025 in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. But not all benefitted equally. Pharmacy retailers CVS and Walgreens dropped 10 (now ranked 74th) and 167 (ranked 856th) slots respectively due to profit decreases. Both firms have suffered from a pullback in retail pharmacy shopping, with Walgreens posed to go private in a by Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm specializing in consumer investments. Including debt and possible future payouts, the deal is valued at $23.7 billion. The company saw a net loss of $6 billion last year. CVS suffered losses from high medical payments in health insurance subsidiary Aetna, leading the company to change up its leadership and wind down its Affordable Care Act business. Still, its profit decreased 37% to $4.6 billion on $37.3 billion in revenue. Forbes leading retailing company Amazon, has its own pharmacy aspirations. The company launched a new medication support package for Medicare patients on top of its online pharmacy offering as it tries to take market share away from the legacy players. Among the 80 retail companies that made this year's Global 2000 list sit five newcomers. Pet marketplace Chewy, the sole new American company, climbed 755 spots (now ranked 1,554) thanks to a final quarter of customer growth after two years of decline. Pet parents' one-time purchases and subscriptions to necessities like food and medicines pushed revenues to $11.8 billion, up 6.4% from last year. International newcomers include Brazilian retail chain Lojas Americanas ( think Target) which has slowly turned the company around after filing for bankruptcy in 2024 due an accounting scandal. Now valued at $206 million, the company is looking to launch a credit card program and a new loyalty program as part of its post-bankruptcy restructure. German retailer Zalando, known among GenZ and Millennial consumers for its tech-forward approach, has enjoyed a 4% growth in sales to $11.4 billion last year. Still, the impact of tariffs are looming on retailers globally. U.S. retailers Target (242), Best Buy (907) and Macy's (1,327) have already revised revenue and profit guidance down for the year as companies and consumers have frontloaded their spending in the first half of the year.
