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Irwin M. Jacobs Reigns at Top of Wealthiest List

Irwin M. Jacobs gave up his chief executive title in 2005, and resigned as Qualcomm Inc.’s chairman of the board last year, but the region’s wealthiest person ranked No. 1 on the San Diego Business Journal’s San Diego’s Wealthiest list continues to be actively involved in his community.

Last year, he began working on a civic rehabilitation project at the Plaza de Panama in the center of Balboa Park in time for the centennial celebration of the 1915 Panama California Exposition, the same event the park was created to host.

The concept would remove parking spaces at the Prado to make it more pedestrian friendly. It also involves building an underground parking garage with about 800 spaces and a connecting bridge leading to the parking.

Jacobs is spearheading a $25 million fundraising effort, including an unspecified donation from him and his wife Joan, to pay for the estimated $40 million project.

The rehab project has encountered opposition from historic-preservation circles, but as of last month, Jacobs was still working on the effort, appearing with Mayor Jerry Sanders and introducing a video explaining what’s involved and how it would improve the city’s renowned park.

Jacobs’ latest civic effort is but one of several he and Joan have actively supported with an amassed fortune, estimated at $1.5 billion. In 2002, their $120 million contribution to the San Diego Symphony rescued that organization from almost certain bankruptcy. They also pledged a similar amount to the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, and $75 million for a future specialty hospital at the La Jolla school, among several other big-ticket capital projects.

So numerous have Jacobs’ donations been in recent years that The San Diego Union-Tribune named him this year “Philanthropist in Chief.”

Jacobs, 78, and fellow engineer Andrew Viterbi, ranked as No. 9 on the San Diego’s Wealthiest list, founded Linkabit Corp. in 1968. The San Diego consulting business developed a wireless telecommunications technology that became the basis for their next business, Qualcomm, formed in 1985.

Today, Qualcomm is the area’s largest company measured by both revenue (about $15 billion) and employees (recently counting 17,500, including some 12,000 locally) and has benefited from a global adoption of cellphones that often run on the company’s patented technology.

-Mike Allen

#2 THEODORE W. WAITT

Co-founder of Gateway Inc.; Chairman of Avalon Capital Group Inc.

Estimated net worth: $710 million

Theodore W. Waitt’s roots are in ranching. The businessman proudly notes that he is the son of a fourth-generation cattleman.

As the 20th century came to a close, however, fortunes were not to be made in ranching but in personal computers. Waitt did just that, co-founding Gateway Inc. and steering it as chairman and CEO. He eventually moved the company from South Dakota to San Diego and had several good years. As Gateway’s fortunes changed, it merged with eMachines and moved to Orange County in 2004. Waitt relinquished control in 2005.

The computer land-rush left Waitt with a fortune now estimated at $710 million, down from $730 million in 2010, making him the second wealthiest person in San Diego County.

Today, Waitt lives in La Jolla and still makes news with his philanthropic and business endeavors. Through his wholly owned Avalon Capital Group Inc., Waitt invests in companies such as electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. and high-definition television maker Vizio Inc.

Waitt serves as a trustee for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and is a major donor. In February, the institute announced a $20 million gift to form the Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center. Biophotonics is the science of using light to investigate biological function. Experts in that very specialized area run the center, which is equipped with sophisticated tools to create images of cells.

Waitt runs the philanthropic Waitt Foundation, which does work locally and in the Siouxland region of Iowa and South Dakota, where Waitt was born. Foundation projects include the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, which works against domestic violence. New York’s Tribeca Film Festival put “The Bully Project,” an institute-sponsored documentary depicting school bullying, on its bill in the spring.

The businessman’s charitable work also leans heavily toward the conservation and exploration of another frontier, the world’s oceans.

— Brad Graves

#3 CHARLES H. BRANDES

Founder and chairman Brandes Investment Partners LP

Estimated net worth: $650 million

While Charles H. Brandes’ net worth may not be as high as it once was, it’s safe to say he’s doing OK.

With an estimated $650 million, Brandes, 68, ranks No. 3 on the Wealthiest list, well below his net worth of $2.6 billion in 2007.

According to Forbes magazine, Brandes is worth a lot more — $1.3 billion — and ranked him No. 331 on its list of the wealthiest Americans.

The founder and chairman of Brandes Investment Partners LP, with headquarters in Carmel Valley, manages total assets of $42.4 billion, well off the $120 billion in assets the firm managed in 2007.

Brandes and his firm focus on value investing, or seeking out well-run companies whose stocks are undervalued in the market. The strategy espoused by his mentor, the late Benjamin Graham, worked exceedingly well earlier in the decade, but post-recession, it’s difficult to say what works.

The Pennsylvania native doesn’t seek publicity, but he got plenty of attention this year during a messy legal battle with ex-wife Linda, whom he divorced in 2005. She wasn’t satisfied with the settlement she received and filed to have the settlement adjusted. According to numerous published reports, she wanted $597 million along with a monthly stipend of $735,000. In October, a San Diego judge granted her $10 million and $485,000 a month.

Charles remarried in 2006 to current wife, Tanya, who obtained a medical degree from Stanford University’s School of Medicine. The couple established a foundation that is engaged in providing support for a number of scientific and clinical initiatives including HIV/AIDS research and prevention; grants to arts organizations and individuals; and funding for a variety of educational programs and scholarships including one at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management.

Brandes is not one to skimp on the costs of celebrating. He and Tanya throw an annual Halloween ball, and usually hire top talent to entertain their guests. Last year, it was rocker Christina Aguilera for a cost of about $1 million. He also hired Sir Elton John for about the same rate to play for he and Tanya’s wedding in 2006.

— Mike Allen

#4 ARTHUR E. NICHOLAS

Co-founder of Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management; Founder of Nicholas Investment Partners

Estimated net worth: $590 million

Arthur E. Nicholas, 65, moved up a position on the 2011 San Diego Business Journal Wealthiest list from the previous year even though his estimated net worth dropped by 8 percent from 2010. His ranking at No. 4 this year with a net worth of $590 million compares with his No. 5 ranking on the Business Journal’s Wealthiest list last year with $640 million.

Nicholas acquired much of his wealth through Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management, a San Diego-based investment management firm he co-founded with partner Fred Applegate in 1984. The company was purchased by Allianz Global Investors in late 2000 when it had $45 billion under management and employed a staff of more than 400 in offices in San Diego, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Amsterdam and Melbourne, according to Allianz. At the time of the acquisition, Nicholas served as Nicholas-Applegate Captial’s chairman and CEO. Afterward, he served on the Nicholas-Applegate Executive Committee and was a member of the Allianz Dresdner Asset Management Executive Committee.

Years later, in 2006, Nicholas went on to found Nicholas Investment Partners L.P., a Del Mar investment management firm that is a 100 percent employee-owned partnership. With more than 40 years of investment experience, Nicholas serves as an adviser to the portfolio management and research process as well as the firm’s business management.

According to its website, Nicholas Investment Partners offers strategies that benefit from the firm’s expertise in three market segments: small cap, mid cap and convertibles. The website says that the firm is committed to limiting its assets under management in order to continue to add value to client portfolios.

Nicholas’ background before Nicholas-Applegate included a stint as managing director and chief investment officer at Pacific Century Advisors, an investment subsidiary of Security Pacific Corp. Previously he worked for Security Pacific Bank and San Diego Trust & Savings Bank. Nicholas earned his B.S. degree in finance from San Diego State University.

Nicholas and his wife, Catherine, are linked to Wagonhound Land & Livestock Co. LLC, a 150,000-acre ranch in Douglas, Wyo., that raises cattle, breeds horses and provides outfitting services for hunting.

— Julie Gallant

#5 JOHN J. MOORES

Investor and part owner of San Diego Padres

Estimated net worth: $475 million

John J. Moores saw his net worth decline again this year to $475 million, ranking him No. 5 on the Wealthiest list, down from last year when he was No. 3.

Best known in San Diego as the owner of the San Diego Padres, Moores completed a lengthy divorce this year from wife Becky, a separation that began in 2008, and resulted in a phased sale of the club for a reported $500 million.

Though that ownership certainly yielded profits (he and Larry Lucchino purchased the team in 1994 for $84 million), Moores made his fortune in the software industry. In 1980, he formed BMC Software Inc. in Houston using about $1,000 in capital. He sold the business management software company 12 years later for $400 million.

In 1989, he began investing in another software company, Peregrine Systems, based in San Diego. He later became its chairman from 1990 to 2000, and again in 2002, when he returned to deal with a major accounting scandal. Although he sold a large chunk of his stock during his first tenure, netting about $600 million, Moores was never criminally prosecuted as were more than a dozen of Peregrine’s top managers, several of whom received prison sentences.

A lifelong believer in the merits of education, Moores put himself through college and obtained bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Houston. In 1991, he made a $51 million contribution to the school, at the time the largest ever to a public university. He also served on the University of Houston’s Board of Regents, and later on the University of California Board of Regents.

In 1992, he formed JMI Equity, an investment firm that recently listed $2.1 billion in assets under management. His holdings also include commercial real estate that his company developed through its deal with the City of San Diego in constructing Petco Park, which opened in 2004.

Among the many organizations that he and his foundation have supported are The Scripps Research Institute, UC San Diego, San Diego State University, the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Symphony, St. Vincent de Paul Village, and the River Blindness Foundation, which he founded.

— Mike Allen

#6 ERNEST S. RADY

Founder and executive board chairman American Assets Trust Inc.

Estimated net worth: $420 million

This has been a busy year in the professional life of Ernest S. Rady, a longtime presence on the region’s wealthiest list, who this year rose from No. 10 to No. 6, with an estimated net worth of $420 million, according to The Rich Register and extrapolated data from other sources.

In January, American Assets Trust Inc., the San Diego-based real estate investment firm that Rady founded in 1967, conducted an initial public offering of common stock that raised $564 million. Bloomberg News reported at the time that the American Assets IPO was the largest U.S. offering by a real estate trust in more than a year, and the biggest since Starwood Property Trust Inc. raised $932 million in August 2009.

Since the IPO, American Assets has bolstered its mostly West Coast portfolio with acquisitions including the $91.6 million purchase of six office buildings in downtown Portland, Ore. As of Sept. 30, the firm had gross real estate assets of $1.7 billion and liquidity of $350.3 million, according to a November statement.

Rady’s long, high-profile career also includes heading Insurance Company of the West and Westcorp, a financial services holding company, both of which he founded in 1971. He served as Westcorp’s chairman and CEO from 1973 until 2006.

He was chairman of Western Financial Bank from 1982 until 2006, and Western Financial’s CEO from 1994 to 1996 and 1998 to 2006. He also had director and chairman stints with WFS Financial Inc., an auto finance company, and the California division of Wachovia Corp.

Rady currently chairs the board of directors at Insurance Company of the West, and the Dean’s Advisory Council of Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. He is a trustee at Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Scripps Health.

Among several large philanthropic contributions over the years, he and wife Evelyn made a $60 million donation to Children’s Hospital of San Diego in 2006, which became Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego.

— Lou Hirsh

#7 WALTER J. ZABLE

CEO of Cubic Corp.

Estimated net worth: $420 million

Walter J. Zable founded Cubic Corp. in the days of Harry Truman, has run it into the decade of “Harry Potter,” and in the process became San Diego’s seventh wealthiest individual.

Today at age 96, the executive holds a 38.9 percent stake in publicly traded Cubic, which topped the billion-dollar revenue mark in 2009 and reported $1.29 billion in revenue this year.

Zable’s estimated net worth is $420 million, unchanged from 2010.

Members of Zable’s circle say the executive retains a keen business sense and has the ability to “smell nonsense” (or more earthy words to that effect). In September, Aviation Week’s Joseph Anselmo reported that Zable keeps office hours from noon to 6 p.m. and still gets a lot out of the job.

After a career working for other businesses (including Convair, a San Diego aerospace icon), Zable founded Cubic in 1951. As the years passed, he expanded Cubic from an electronics firm to a defense and transportation technology house. Cubic’s fare collection systems are part of the mass transit infrastructure in metropolitan areas worldwide, and account for a third of Cubic’s revenue. Cubic’s extensive line of defense electronics includes a new technology that can help a sniper identify whether the person in his gun sight is a friend or a foe.

Zable graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., with the class of 1937. He later served on the college’s board of visitors. The school named its stadium after Zable following a $10 million gift to the school in 1990 — a nod to Zable’s college football days as well as his pro career during the late 1930s with the Richmond Arrows and New York Giants.

Zable’s philanthropic work includes providing college scholarships. He has reportedly given 700 high school athletes a means to further their education.

— Brad Graves

#8 CONRAD T. PREBYS

Chief executive, Progress Construction and Management Co.

Estimated net worth: $400 million

Philanthropist and construction industry veteran Conrad T. Prebys maintains his 2010 No. 8 spot on this year’s list of the region’s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $400 million, according to The Rich Register and other extrapolated data.

Much of his success can be credited to savvy moves to take on construction projects at the right time, and in the right sectors, especially what is now the high-demand, low-supply local apartment market.

The Indiana native first visited San Diego in the 1970s and decided to make it his permanent home.

“I had no car, no clothes, no nothing,” Prebys recalled, of that era during a recent interview with the San Diego Business Journal.

He got into the construction business with a partner in 1977, and at one point, he had 117 projects going on throughout the county. By 1980, he had bought out his partner and moved into building and owning ministorage facilities, later acquiring apartment buildings.

Prebys said he was “quite active” in buying up apartments during the last major recession in the early 1990s, and he now owns around 7,000 units countywide. He said his privately-held firm, Progress Construction and Management Co. in Pacific Beach, generates $40 million in annual revenue and employs 69.

The year 2011 has been a busy one for Prebys in both business and philanthropy. In September, Prebys and Selwyn Isakow, chairman of The Oxford Investment Group, purchased British luxury boat builder Sealine International for an undisclosed price.

In July, Prebys gave Scripps Health $45 million for its new cardiovascular institute in La Jolla, the largest donation in Scripps’ history. That followed his $15 million donation in March to the San Diego Zoo, for a redesign of the zoo’s big-cat and koala areas, and his $2 million donation in February to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla.

— Lou Hirsh

#9 ANDREW J. VITERBI

Co-founder of Qualcomm Inc. and Linkabit

Estimated net worth: $390 million

Wealth is one sign of success. Another is having a scientific principle named after you. Andrew J. Viterbi has both going for him.

Viterbi, 76, was part of the inner circle of two important San Diego technology companies, Linkabit and Qualcomm Inc. Now retired, he has an estimated net worth of $390 million, down from $420 million one year ago. Still, he ranks ninth on the San Diego Business Journal’s list of wealthiest San Diegans.

In 1966, he came up with the Viterbi Algorithm, a mathematical formula that can help separate voice and data from background noise.

The formula has applications in cellphones, DNA sequencing and voice recognition, according to the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering website.

Viterbi’s relationship with the university stretches back to his days as a doctoral candidate.

Today the USC Ph.D. is a university trustee. Viterbi and his wife, Erna, gave $52 million to the engineering school in 2004.

Though retired, Viterbi keeps up with the latest in business: He joined the advisory board of San Diego-based On-Ramp Wireless in March. He also runs the Viterbi Group LLC, an angel investor and advisory group, and the Viterbi Family Foundation.

Viterbi is active in causes benefiting San Diego’s Jewish community.

— Brad Graves

#10 MARTIN J. WYGOD

Chairman of WebMD Health Corp.

Estimated net worth: $290 million

Health care industry entrepreneur Martin J. Wygod of Rancho Santa Fe rounds out the top 10 on the Business Journal’s San Diego’s Wealthiest list this year.

Wygod, 71, chairman of publicly held health information company WebMD Health Corp., has an estimated personal net worth of $290 million in 2011, according to The Rich Register database. That’s down from $310 million in 2010, when he was one notch higher on the Wealthiest list at No. 9.

Wygod arrived at New York-based WebMD in 2000 to take on the turnaround and growth of one of the few survivors of the dot-com era, and he drove the company to record profits and stability.

Born in New York and a graduate of New York University, Wygod began his career with the late Fletcher Jones’ Computer Sciences Corp. While working there, he received two thoroughbred horses as a gift from Jones, sparking a passion for thoroughbred breeding and racing that continues today.

Wygod left computers for the home medical services industry, building Medco Containment Services Inc. into the nation’s largest mail-order prescription drug company. He marketed the service as a way to cut corporate health-care costs, snagging major clients such as General Motors and Mobil, according to Forbes.

New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc. bought Medco in 1993 for $6.5 billion.

He moved west in 1996, becoming very active in the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, where he’s now a director. He often teams up with his good friend Jenny Craig, also a racing enthusiast who lives in Rancho Santa Fe, to train horses for racing. He also breeds horses at the 2,000-acre Lane’s End Farm in the Kentucky’s horse-racing country.

Wygod is active on the charitable front. Most recently, he and his wife, Pamela, president of The Rose Foundation, contributed $2.5 million for a new pediatric care center in Oceanside that opened in March. The center, built to resemble a castle, is run by South Dakota-based Sanford Health and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego.

— Kelly Quigley

#11 ROBERT E. PRICE

Chairman of PriceSmart Inc.

Estimated net worth: $120 million

Despite some recent market turbulence, San Diego-based retailer PriceSmart Inc., started by Robert E. Price and his late father Sol, continues to rack up consistent revenue growth in the Caribbean and Latin American countries where it does business.

The company had sales of $1.7 billion from its 29 warehouse club stores in 12 countries during fiscal 2011, up from $1.4 billion the prior year. It now boasts more than 1 million membership cardholders.

While the company’s profits didn’t meet Wall Street expectations in its latest quarter, its performance in an otherwise tough global economy has helped Price maintain his spot at No. 11 on this year’s San Diego Business Journal list of the San Diego region’s wealthiest.

Price is currently chairman of PriceSmart, and owns about 10 percent of its stock. His net worth at the end of November was an estimated $120 million, according to The Rich Register and extrapolated data from other sources — down from as high as $200 million in 2007.

He and his father Sol, who died in 2009, launched and grew the successful Price Club chain of warehouse stores before merging them with Seattle-based Costco Wholesale Corp. in 1994. The duo then launched PriceSmart Inc., starting with a store in Panama in 1996, and Robert was also the company’s chief executive officer before relinquishing that title in July 2010. (The current CEO is Jose Luis Laparte.)

Price’s charitable work has included the revitalization of San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, where his father resided in his youth. Robert Price is chairman of the Price Family Charitable Fund, which last month made a $50 million contribution to the University of Southern California to endow and name the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

The donation will establish the USC Sol Price Center for Social Innovation, which will support work in City Heights for five years before expanding to a second local neighborhood.

— Lou Hirsh

#12 GENEVIEVE “JENNY” CRAIG

Co-founder of Jenny Craig Inc.

Estimated net worth: $110 million

Genevieve “Jenny” Craig moved up a notch since last year on the Business Journal’s San Diego’s Wealthiest list. With a 2011 net worth estimated at $110 million (up from $90 million in 2010), according to The Rich Register database, weight loss guru Craig ranks No. 12 on the list.

The 79-year-old Craig co-founded Jenny Craig Inc. in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband Sidney, who died in 2008. What began as a small chain of weight loss centers in 1983 grew into a 652-store network before the duo sold the company in 2002 for $115 million to private investment firms ACI Capital Co. Inc. and DB Capital Partners Inc.

Four years later, the world’s largest food company, Nestle S.A., took ownership.

Craig, born in Louisiana, resides in Rancho Santa Fe, where she owns Rancho Paseana, a 229-acre thoroughbred horse farm, according to The Rich Register. The property was recently on the market with an asking price of nearly $25 million, but is not currently for sale, according to the listing brokerage.

Even though Jenny Craig isn’t involved in running the Carlsbad-based weight loss company, her first name is becoming ever important to the brand image. The company in November launched a sweeping marketing campaign to become known simply as “Jenny.”

Craig is involved in many local charitable causes, notably with San Diego Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine, where she and her late husband are members of the National Honorary Board.

— Kelly Quigley

#13 JOSEPH “JOE” E. KIANI

Chairman and CEO of Masimo Corp.

Estimated net worth: $110 million

Prolific inventor Joseph “Joe” E. Kiani, 47, uses engineering to save lives.

Iranian-born Kiani is chairman and CEO of Irvine-based Masimo Corp., a publicly held medical technology company that makes innovative noninvasive patient monitoring tools.

According to The Rich Register database, Kiani’s estimated net worth in 2011 is $110 million, about level with his estimated net worth in 2010. That puts him as No. 13 on this year’s San Diego Business Journal Wealthiest list.

The Irvine resident attended San Diego State University, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering.

Inspired by his dad, who was an electrical engineer, and his mom, who was a nurse, Kiani focused his career on engineering for the medical industry. He founded Masimo in 1989 as a private “garage startup” company because he was convinced that he found a way to solve key problems that had long plagued patient monitoring, especially pulse oximetry, an important test that measures the amount of oxygen in the blood.

He went on to become the inventor on more than 50 patents related to patient monitoring.

Under Kiani’s leadership, Masimo has grown to become a 2,500-person global company with product revenues that have increased fourfold in the last five years to $405.4 million in 2010. Revenues in 2011 are projected to be between $436 million and $439 million. The company has technology license and manufacturing agreements with major patient monitoring manufacturers such as GE Medical, Medtronic Inc., Philips and Spacelabs.

In 2010, Kiani had total compensation from Masimo of $5.1 million, including a salary of $708,412. Masimo shares on Oct. 26 sank to a record low after the company posted disappointing third-quarter results due to lower sales for two key product lines.

“I have a strong sense of curiosity, a passion for mathematics and a great ability to look beyond what others think is possible to bring impossible solutions to life,” he said in a November interview with The Orange County Register.

— Kelly Quigley

#14 JAMES M. SWEENEY

Chairman, CEO of PatientSafe Solutions Inc.

Estimated net worth: $90 million

Prolific inventor Joseph “Joe” E. Kiani, 47, uses engineering to save lives.

Iranian-born Kiani is chairman and CEO of Irvine-based Masimo Corp., a publicly held medical technology company that makes innovative noninvasive patient monitoring tools.

According to The Rich Register database, Kiani’s estimated net worth in 2011 is $110 million, about level with his estimated net worth in 2010. That puts him as No. 13 on this year’s San Diego Business Journal Wealthiest list.

The Irvine resident attended San Diego State University, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering.

Inspired by his dad, who was an electrical engineer, and his mom, who was a nurse, Kiani focused his career on engineering for the medical industry. He founded Masimo in 1989 as a private “garage startup” company because he was convinced that he found a way to solve key problems that had long plagued patient monitoring, especially pulse oximetry, an important test that measures the amount of oxygen in the blood.

He went on to become the inventor on more than 50 patents related to patient monitoring.

Under Kiani’s leadership, Masimo has grown to become a 2,500-person global company with product revenues that have increased fourfold in the last five years to $405.4 million in 2010. Revenues in 2011 are projected to be between $436 million and $439 million. The company has technology license and manufacturing agreements with major patient monitoring manufacturers such as GE Medical, Medtronic Inc., Philips and Spacelabs.

In 2010, Kiani had total compensation from Masimo of $5.1 million, including a salary of $708,412. Masimo shares on Oct. 26 sank to a record low after the company posted disappointing third-quarter results due to lower sales for two key product lines.

“I have a strong sense of curiosity, a passion for mathematics and a great ability to look beyond what others think is possible to bring impossible solutions to life,” he said in a November interview with The Orange County Register.

— Kelly Quigley

#14 JAMES M. SWEENEY

Chairman, CEO of PatientSafe Solutions Inc.

Estimated net worth: $90 million

Serial entrepreneur James M. Sweeney, 69, moved up in the San Diego Business Journal’s Wealthiest list rankings considerably from last year. Ranked at No. 14 with an estimated net worth of $90 million this year, Sweeney was placed at No. 18 on the list in 2010 with a net worth of $80 million.

Sweeney has been involved in buying, selling or taking public more than 20 health care product and service companies. Credited with launching the home infusion therapy industry, now valued at billions of dollars, he’s raised more than $2 billion in financing for his various companies, including $500 million in venture capital, $700 million in debt financing, and $400 million in three initial public offerings. The founder of eight health care companies starting with CareMark in 1979, he’s sold two of his companies for more than $1 billion.

Sweeney’s known inside the health care industry for bringing technology to the industry.

His focus has been on using wireless technology to do such things as monitor patients while they’re at home, or to ensure that hospital patients receive the correct medications.

Sweeney currently serves as the chairman and CEO of PatientSafe Solutions Inc., a San Diego-based patient and nurse-centered company that focuses on ensuring patient safety for hospitals. PatientSafe Solutions, formerly known as IntelliDOT Corp., created the PatientTouch smart device product that connects caregivers to patient data in real time. The hand-held device that offers guided clinical workflows, alerts and reminders as well as serves as a text messaging, voice over IP and videoconferencing communications tool is touted on the company website for preventing medical errors, improving safety and quality and decreasing the amount of time nurses spend on administrative duties.

Prior to starting PatientSafe, Sweeney was founder and served as CEO of CardioNet, the developer and marketer of Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry, a technology and service that allows physicians to continuously monitor cardiac activity as patients go about their daily lives.

In particular, CardioNet is focused on helping physicians diagnose and treat patients with cardiac arrhythmias, or heart rhythm disorders. Founded in San Diego in 1999, Sweeney left the company now located in Pennsylvania in 2008.

Sweeney is an entrepreneur-in-residence at the William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology at UC San Diego.

He received an undergraduate degree in business administration and a B.S. in business from San Diego State University.

— Julie Gallant

#15 MASOOD K. TAYEBI

Founder of BioAlta LLC

Estimated net worth: $90 million

Masood K. Tayebi, No. 15 on the San Diego’s Wealthiest list with an estimated net worth of $90 million, is responsible for creating a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion in the companies he has founded and built. And, at 50 years old, he’s only just begun.

Tayebi is the founder and executive chairman of BioAlta LLC, a global biology outsourcing company seeking to help drive drug development forward more efficiently and cost effectively. BioAlta has offices in San Diego, New York and Beijing and plans to expand to other cities in China in 2011. He is also a partner, with his brother Massih, No. 16 on the Wealthiest list, in the venture capital firm of BridgeWest LLC and the Biotech Investment Group.

It all began with a business trip from London to Washington, D.C., in 1993. Impressed by the region and the pace of business in America, Masood decided to seek his fortunes in the U.S. A year later, Massih arrived, and they founded Wireless Facilities Inc., an engineering services firm, in New York. In 1995, the company moved to San Diego.

The company soared to success, only to be clobbered by the dot-com crash in the early 2000s. Not to be deterred, the Tayebi brothers shifted the focus of the business to provide professional services to the U.S. government, and the company is now known as Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc.

Tayebi left Kratos in 2005 to seek his next challenge. He founded BioDuro LLC, a drug discovery outsourcing company. In 2009, BioDuro joined Pharmaceutical Product Development, where he remains a senior adviser.

No stranger to adversity and hard work, the Iranian-born Tayebi was sent to London during the 1979 Iranian Revolution by his family, because he and his six siblings were no longer allowed to attend school due to religious persecution. In London, he earned a doctorate in mobile radio from the University of Liverpool and a master’s degree in electronics engineering from the University of Southampton.

— Stephanie R. Glidden

#16 MASSIH TAYEBI

Co-founder of BridgeWest LLC

Estimated net worth: $90 million

Massih Tayebi, new to the San Diego’s Wealthiest list at No. 16, has an estimated net worth of $90 million. His journey to the list is a page straight out of the annals of the American Dream.

Tayebi is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of BridgeWest LLC, an investment firm specializing in the development of emerging technology companies primarily in the telecommunications industry in North America. He is listed on a Bloomberg Business Week executive profile as CEO and president of Rapid Bridge, which was reportedly purchased by Qualcomm Inc. in June.

Born in the Iranian countryside in 1959, he was sent to London for an education when the 1979 Iranian Revolution prevented him and his brother Masood from attending school. Masood is ranked 15th on the San Diego’s Wealthiest list with an estimated net worth of $90 million.

Massih holds a master of science degree in computer integrated manufacturing and his Ph.D. in the integration of design and process planning from the University of Strathclyde.

He was a member of the senior faculty of the Engineering Department at the University of Paisley in Great Britain when he moved to the U.S. in 1994 to co-found Wireless Facilities Inc. and embark on his entrepreneurial career.

Massih served as chairman of WFI until he left in 2002 to pursue a variety of technology and telecom startup opportunities. WFI is now known as Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc.

He is a generous philanthropist whose charitable interests include many causes benefiting underprivileged and abused children around the world — from building homes in Mexico to aiding hospitals in Africa, according to the Parsa Community Foundation website. He also funds the Massih & Haleh Tayebi Annual Scholarship of the Iranian American Scholarship fund.

— Stephanie R. Glidden

#17 DANIEL J. EPSTEIN

Founder and chairman The ConAm Group of Cos.

Estimated net worth: $80 million

Daniel J. Epstein, who founded what was originally known as ConAm Management Corp. in 1975, drops two notches from a year ago on this year’s list, even though his estimated net worth held steady from 2010 at $80 million.

Epstein is chairman of the privately held, San Diego-based firm now known as The ConAm Group of Cos., with two principal divisions — the management firm and ConAm Investment Group. It now oversees a nationwide portfolio of approximately 50,000 fee-managed and company-owned apartments.

ConAm Management Corp. was recently named the nation’s 20th largest manager of affordable housing by the National Affordable Housing Management Association. That marked a quick rise, the industry group noted, since ConAm first appeared in the NAHMA rankings in the 92nd position in 2008.

“The increase in our affordable housing portfolio is in keeping with the growth strategy that we have had in place for several years,” ConAm President Brad Forrester said in a June statement. “Our goal is to continue to grow this segment of our business by nurturing existing relationships and cultivating new relationships with quality affordable housing developers and investors.”

Before his days leading ConAm, Epstein was executive vice president of American Housing Guild, a residential development firm in San Diego. Earlier, he began his real estate development career working for an apartment developer in Dallas.

His earliest professional stints included positions with construction contracting firms, working on sites such as Cape Kennedy, UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion and a Voice of America radio station in the Philippines.

Epstein serves on several boards, including the University of Southern California Board of Trustees, the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate Development and the USC School of Engineering. He is a director of the National Multi Housing Council and the Stevens Cancer Center.

He has also served as a trustee at Scripps College, San Diego Symphony, and the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

— Lou Hirsh

#18 WILLIAM R. STENSRUD

Founder of Stratacom

Estimated net worth: $80 million

William R. Stensrud, a serial technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist, ranks 19th on the list with an estimated net worth of $80 million.

Stensrud has a long list of successes; chief among them is Stratacom, which he sold to Cisco Systems for $4 billion in 1993.

He retired in 2007 after a 10-year stint with venture capital firm Enterprise Partners, and is now a private investor focusing on micro venture opportunities. He has investments in a software business that makes tools for the music industry and an interactive Internet-enabled fitness business.

Born in 1949, Stensrud graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in computer science. He held a variety of technical, marketing and executive positions in the communications industry, eventually moving to Silicon Valley in the 1970s.

Stensrud founded Stratacom in 1986 in Cupertino. The company produced the first commercial cell switch or fast-packet switch technology, which was the working proof for the technology that became known as asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM.

In the early ’90s, Stensrud and his wife and three children moved to San Diego, where he invested in or worked with several technology companies. One of the most notable businesses was Juniper Networks, where he retains a seat on the board.

In 2000, Stensrud and his wife purchased a 1937 colonial mansion for $25 million on 5.5 acres and 396 feet of beachfront property in Del Mar. The sale set the record at the time for the highest-priced home sold in San Diego County. The mansion was listed for sale by the Stensruds for $76 million in 2007, breaking another record for the county. Public records show the listing was removed in November 2008.

Stensrud and his wife are active philanthropists supporting children and the arts through their foundation and other charitable giving.

— Stephanie R. Glidden

#19 MARK D. DANKBERG

Co-founder of ViaSat Inc.

Estimated net worth: $75 million

In 1986, Mark D. Dankberg saw opportunity in the nascent communications satellite industry and decided to leave one of the area’s premier entrepreneurial spawning grounds, Linkabit, to form his own business.

He had worked at the same business run by Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi for two years but was antsy to get out on his own. Together with two partners, Mark Miller and Steve Hart, he formed ViaSat Inc., working out of Dankberg’s Encinitas garage.

A savvy businessman, Dankberg struck agreements early on with prime defense contractors that included provisos that if the contractors won any new contracts as a result of his company’s work, ViaSat would become a subcontractor.

Initially focused on working with manufacturers serving the defense sector, ViaSat made a breakthrough in 2000 when it acquired the satellite communications business of Scientific Atlanta, which was later acquired by Cisco Systems.

“All of a sudden, we’re a global company with a global sales force and global customers. It almost doubled our revenue and put us right in the middle of the commercial satellite markets,” said ViaSat spokesman Bruce Rowe.

For its 2011 fiscal year that ended July 2, ViaSat reported net income of $36 million on revenue of $802 million. In October, the company launched its own satellite into orbit as part of a four-year, $1 billion strategy to provide broadband communication services to rural parts of the nation. That strategy included the $568 million acquisition of WildBlue Communications Inc. of Denver in 2009.

Dankberg, 57, took an annual salary last year of $800,000 and had a total compensation package valued at $4.5 million, according to the company’s most recent proxy report.

But that isn’t why he’s among the region’s wealthiest people. The same report shows he owns about 1.9 million shares of his company’s stock, or 4.7 percent of the total outstanding.

That stake was valued at more than $88 million, given the Dec. 6 price of more than $46.

— Mike Allen

#20 RICHARD SULPIZIO

President and CEO of Qualcomm Enterprise Services

Estimated net worth: $75 million

Richard Sulpizio’s longtime association with Qualcomm Inc., where he’s held leadership positions for most of the past two decades, has made him a wealthy man. The Rich Register estimates his net worth this year at $75 million, ranking him No. 20 on the San Diego Business Journal’s Wealthiest list. That’s up from an estimated net worth of $70 million in 2009.

Sulpizio, 61, joined chipmaker giant Qualcomm in May 1991 as vice president of information systems, and was quickly promoted to senior vice president in September of the same year. In addition to stints as president and chief operating officer of the company, Sulpizio was put in charge of Qualcomm subsidiary MediaFlo USA Inc., chartered with bringing multimedia services to the wireless industry.

Currently, he serves as president and CEO of Qualcomm Enterprise Services, a division responsible for mobile communications and services to the transportation industry.

Before joining Qualcomm, Sulpizio worked for computer and electronics company Unisys Corp. and for engineering and construction company Fluor Corp.

Since 2005, Sulpizio has served as a director of ResMed Corp., a manufacturer of medical equipment for the treatment of sleep-disordered breathing and other respiratory problems. He has also served as a director of CA Inc., formerly Computer Associates Inc., an information management software company.

Sulpizio and his wife, Maria, known as Gaby, conduct philanthropy through The Magali Foundation in La Jolla. The couple provided a leadership gift of $10 million to UC San Diego in 2005 to support the construction of a cardiovascular patient care and clinical research facility, which opened in December 2010 as the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center.

The state-of-the-art center unifies ambulatory, clinical and inpatient heart and stroke care in one location. The couple also gave $1 million to the Arc of San Diego in 2006 to assist with renovating its facilities that help people with disabilities.

Sulpizio holds a B.A. degree from Cal State Los Angeles and an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California.

— Julie Gallant

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