FB Roundup Jared Isaacman, the Olsen twins, the Ansin family
Jared Isaacman becomes the first civilian to walk in space
Jared Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of payment processing firm Shift4 Payments, has become the first civilian to walk in space.
He made the first private spacewalk last week while orbiting almost 460 miles above the Earth. This is higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope.
Isaacman is only the 264th person to have performed a spacewalk since 1965. Until now, every spacewalk has been conducted by professional astronauts.
The spacewalk was part of a five-day commercial flight on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was financed by Isaacman and Space X, which is owned by Elon Musk. The mission was led by mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
Isaacman has not disclosed how much he paid for the trip, though newspaper estimates put the cost at around $55 million.
Isaacman’s fortune comes from payment processing firm Shift4 which handles payments for around a third of restaurants in the US. He founded the firm in 1999 when he was only 16, but although he took the company public in 2020, he retained a 38% share.
In 2011, he also founded Draken International, a company which provides training for air force pilots in the US, UK and NATO countries and owns the world’s largest private fleet of military aircraft. A majority stake in Draken was sold to Blackstone in 2019.
Isaacman has an estimated net worth of $2 billion, according to Forbes.
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and Wertheimer brothers take stake in The Row
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the owner of cosmetics giant L’Oréal, and the Wertheimer brothers, the family behind luxury brand Chanel, have taken a minority stake in fashion label The Row which was founded by the Olsen sisters.
The name is a nod to London’s Savile Row, The Row was founded in 2006 by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who originally shot to fame as child actresses in the late 1980s in the US sitcom “Full House”.
Since then, their label has established itself as a respected quiet luxury player with a reputation for a minimalist aesthetic and high-quality materials. The Row has four physical shops including London, New York, Los Angeles, and one in Amagansett in the Hamptons.
Although the figures have not been disclosed, The Row is reported to have a valuation of $1 billion.
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers had long been the richest woman in the world but was dethroned, as we reported recently, by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
A sluggish performance in China’s beauty market has seen her fortune plummet to $89.9 billion. She holds around 35% of the beauty group via her family holding company Téthys, taking over from her mother Liliane Bettencourt, who died in 2017 at the age of 94.
Gerard and Alain Wertheimer took their stake via their family office, Mousse Partners.
As we reported last year, the brothers joined the Dassault family, healthcare entrepreneur Giammaria Giuliani and the Peugeot family to take Paris-based investment bank, Rothschild & Co, private.
The Wertheimer brothers are each valued at $41.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Ansin family plans 2,800 homes outside Fort Lauderdale
Miramar-based Sunbeam Properties, the property company owned by the Ansin Family, is planning a significant mixed-use development called Park Miramar around 30 kilometres southwest of Fort Lauderdale.
The two-phase project would include 2,874 residential units; a 185-room hotel; more than 500,000 square feet of retail, dining and office space; and 32 acres of parkland as well as 7,859 parking spaces.
Park Miramar has been in the planning stages for almost two years, and the project was first mooted publicly in October 2023.
The proposal passed the city’s zoning board unanimously last week and is due to have its first hearing at the city commission soon. Because the site will be rezoned, a second hearing is needed and a final vote will be required.
Sunbeam has said that it intends to self-finance the first phase of development, but that it might approach other capital sources for later phases.
The Ansin family is one of the richest families in Southern Florida worth an estimated $1 billion by Forbes. It was headed, until 2020, by Edmund Ansin who was not only president of Sunbeam Television, he had also inherited a large real estate portfolio from his father Sidney.
After he died, his estate was inherited by his children Andrew, James and Stephanie. Andrew currently runs Sunbeam Properties.
