Maine billionaire makes it onto list of richest Americans
By Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily News Staff
In what may be a first, a Mainer has been named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 400 wealthiest living Americans.
Susan Alfond, a Scarborough resident, is one of three surviving siblings whose father was Harold Alfond, the founder of Dexter Shoe Co. Susan Alfond and her brothers, Bill and Ted, each are estimated to have personal wealth of $3.4 billion, ranking them alongside a few other billionaires in 388th place on the list of 400.
Bill and Ted Alfond are Massachusetts residents, though they grew up in Maine with their sister. A fourth sibling, Peter Alfond, died of malaria in 2017. Bill and Ted Alfond are minority partners in Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and English Premier League soccer team Liverpool Football Club.
The Alfonds derive their wealth from ownership shares of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate headed by Warren Buffett — who ranks fifth on Forbes’ list. Their father, who died in 2007, was friends with Buffett and traded the ownership of Dexter Shoe Co. for Berkshire Hathaway stock that has continued to increase in value.
There are several other billionaires on this year’s Forbes 400 list with ties to Maine, most of them because they summer at seasonal homes they own along the coast.
The wealthiest of them is Edward C. Johnson IV, whose wealth is estimated to be worth $12.6 billion, ranking him as the 70th richest American. Johnson, whose grandfather, Edward C. Johnson II founded Fidelity Investments, has a summer home on Mount Desert Island, and his father, Edward C. Johnson III, long owned property and summered there.
Edward C. Johnson III, who died in 2022, ran the investment firm until handing the reins to his daughter Abigail Johnson in 2014. Abigail Johnson ranks 30th on the Forbes list with an estimated wealth of $31.3 billion, but it is not clear if she or a third Johnson sibling, Elizabeth (who Forbes says is worth $10.6 billion), also owns property or spends summers in Maine.
Other billionaires who rank on the Forbes list and own summer homes on MDI include brothers Stephen and Mitchell Rales, Charles Butt, and Robert Bass, each of whom has an estimated wealth roughly between $5 billion and $9 billion.
John C. Malone, the founder of Liberty Media and one of the largest landowners in the country, owns Mosquito Island off Port Clyde and a summer home in Boothbay. Malone, who with an estimated wealth of $10.7 billion is ranked 89th on the Forbes list, also owns nearly 1 million acres in Maine, including Falcon Lodge on Spencer Lake in Somerset County and surrounding woodlands.
In 2021, he and his wife Leslie Malone gave $25 million to Maine Medical Center..
Another billionaire on the Forbes list with significant ties to Maine is shoe company executive James Davis.
Davis and his wife, Anna Davis, with combined estimated wealth of $6.5 billion, own and operate New Balance shoe company, which last year expanded its production plant in Skowhegan. With the expansion, the company plans to close its Norridgewock factory and to shift all operations and jobs there to Skowhegan.