What Is John Malone's Net Worth?
John Malone is an American businessman and philanthropist who has a net worth of $9 billion.
John Malone is the Chairman and largest shareholder of multiple conglomerates, including Liberty Media, Liberty Global, and Qurate Retail Group. Liberty Global generated around $7.5 billion in revenue in 2023. Through his conglomerate, he owns large stakes in Warner Bros. Discovery and Formula 1. Malone is the second largest private landowner in the United States, owning 2.2 million acres (more than twice the size of Rhode Island). Many know John for his intelligent use of scale economics, one of the top strategies he used to achieve financial success.
Early Life
John Carl Malone was born on March 7, 1941, in Milford, Connecticut. Malone attended Yale University and graduated in 1963 with a bachelor's degree in electric engineering and economics. At Yale, John was part of the honor society, Phi Beta Kappa, and he was also a National Merit scholar. Malone went on to attend Johns Hopkins University, where he completed his master's degree in industrial management. He received his Ph.D. in operations at Johns Hopkins in 1964. Just one year later, in 1965, John completed his second master's degree in electrical engineering at New York University.
Business Career
In 1963, while juggling his studies, Malone began his business career at Belle Telephone Laboratories of AT&T. Named for the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, the company is credited with inventing many things, including the programming language C, the laser beam, calculators, and radio transmission.
In 1967, Malone returned to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins to get a PhD in operations research. Once he completed his doctorate, he went to work for the venerable consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in New York City. John spent three years there consulting for companies including General Electric and IBM. During that time, he learned that Wall Street was not fond of cable companies.
Malone became tired of the life of consulting and took a job at General Instrument in 1973. He had to take a big pay cut from his days at McKinsey. At GI, John was in charge of a division called Jerrold, which made minicomputers for the growing cable TV industry. While at Jerrold, Malone met Bob Magness. In 1973, Magness offered Malone the CEO job at his nearly bankrupt cable company Tele-Communications Inc.
Malone and his wife packed their bags and moved to Colorado to try and save the company. GI had only 400,000 subscribers and $12 million in annual sales. That wouldn't even be that bad, except the company was also $132 million in debt to its creditors.
By 1990, Malone had turned the bankrupt TCI into the biggest cable company in the U.S. with 8.5 million subscribers. AT&T bought TCI in 1998 for $32 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that deal would be worth $48.5 billion today and was a major step for AT&T. It gave the phone giant a way to offer not just local phone service but also high-speed internet service to its customers.
After the sale of TCI, Malone retained control of Liberty Media, a subsidiary of TCI that was a separate publicly traded company. Under John, Liberty has gone from providing cable TV service to owning the networks' broadcasts. He has acquired the Discovery Channel, Virgin Media, QVC, Lionsgate (which owns Starz), Game Show Network, and more over the years.
In 2007, Liberty Media acquired the Atlanta Braves, and Malone turned it into the separately traded Liberty-Braves Group. He personally owns 8% of the MLB team. In 2017, Malone acquired Formula One racing for Liberty for $8 billion and turned that into another separately traded company, Liberty Media Formula One Group, of which he owns 2%. Liberty plans to expand Formula One's audience.
Land Ownership
One of Malone's most notable plots of land owned is Silver Spur Rances, a ranching and beef company. The ranches are scattered around the United States, mostly in states such as Wyoming, New Mexico, and Florida. He also holds miscellaneous ranches in Colorado. These are not to mention his international real estate holdings, such as Humewood Castle and Castlemartin House and Estate, both in Ireland.
On February 1, 2011, Malone surpassed Ted Turner to become the largest individual private landowner in the United States. He owns 2.2 million acres of land. Most of the land he owns is in Maine, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. For 10 years, John was America's largest landowner. In 2021, Malone was bumped down to second-largest landowner, with the Emmerson family acquiring 2.4 million acres of land.
(Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
Philanthropy
In 1997, John established the Malone Family Foundation, which operates the Malone Scholars Program, providing scholarships to private schools throughout the United States.
Malone is notorious for donating to his alma mater. For instance, in 2000, he donated $24 million to the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science for the construction of the Daniel L. Malone Engineering Center, named in honor of Malone's father. In 2011, Malone gave the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering its largest gift ever of $30 million for a new building, named Malone Hall. That same year, he donated $50 million more to the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. He gave an additional $60 million to John Hopkins a few years later.
In addition to his past universities, Malone and his wife donated $42.5 million to Colorado State University to create a new Institute for Biologic Translational Therapies. In 2021, the two donated $25 million to Maine Medical Center to improve the hospital's cardiac and vascular services (in a building that is now named the Malone Family Tower). Leslie Malone received cardiac care at this hospital.
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Personal Life
John Malone is married to Leslie, and they have two children. The family lives in Elizabeth, Colorado. In 2008, John's son Evan D. Malone joined the board of Liberty Media, a conglomerate of which John is the largest shareholder.
Malone is reportedly a libertarian. He donated $250,000 to Donald Trump's campaign. John expressed strong support for Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 United States presidential election.
