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One of the world’s 50 richest people lives in the Philly area. Here are all the locals on Forbes’ billionaires list.

Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass is one of Forbes' Top 50 richest people worldwide. Other area billionaires on the 2023 list include Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin and Phillies owner John Middleton.

Jeffrey S. Yass, a founder and the boss at Susquehanna International Group, addresses a class of interns at the Bala Cynwyd-based investment trading company in 2022. SIG employs over 2,500 worldwide.
Jeffrey S. Yass, a founder and the boss at Susquehanna International Group, addresses a class of interns at the Bala Cynwyd-based investment trading company in 2022. SIG employs over 2,500 worldwide.Read moreSIG

Philadelphia-area billionaire Jeff Yass is officially one of the world’s 50 richest people.

That’s according to the latest Forbes World’s Billionaires List, which ranked the Susquehanna Investment Group founder’s reported $28.5 billion fortune at number 48. He’s the 23rd richest person in the U.S., according to the list.

Yass grew his wealth from investing and trading his own money, founding Susquehanna in 1987 with a group of partners. The firm moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to Bala Cynwyd before expanding beyond the region. It now has outposts worldwide, including in New York; Sydney, Australia; Dublin, Ireland; and Shanghai, China.

Last year, ProPublica reported that Yass pays a lower income tax rate than most Americans, despite his growing wealth. Between 2013 and 2018, Yass earned an average of $1.3 billion a year in annual income, the sixth-highest income of all Americans, according to tax records collected by ProPublica. He reportedly paid 18.7% of his earnings in federal income taxes.

Other Philly-area notables on Forbes’ latest billionaires ranking include Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, Phillies owner John Middleton, and Urban Outfitters founder Richard Hayne.

Bernard Arnault, who owns the French retail and cosmetics behemoth LVMH, earned the top spot on the Forbes list, with a net worth of $211 billion. He shares the ranking with his family; his daughter Delphine and sons Antoine and Alexandre all hold executive positions within the company. LVMH’s portfolio includes fashion brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, Loewe, and Birkenstock; jewelry brands Tiffany & Co. and Tag Heuer; wine and spirits companies Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Belvedere, and Veuve Clicquot; and cosmetics companies including Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, Benefit Cosmetics, and Sephora.

Telsa, SpaceX, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk ($180 billion), Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($114 billion), Oracle founder Larry Ellison ($107 billion), and Berkshire Hathaway founder and CEO Warren Buffet ($106 billion) rounded out the Top 5.

Names that fell off the list this year include Kanye West, whose net worth Forbes estimates fell from $2 billion to about $400 million, and disgraced crypto exec Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried built a $24 billion fortune from FTX, a crypto trading platform he founded and which filed for bankruptcy last year. Forbes estimates his net worth is down to roughly $10 million.

Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives are facing federal fraud charges, among others, as the government investigates. Gary Wang, one of Bankman-Fried’s close friends and business partners who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., also fell off the Forbes billionaires list.