Until just a few days before the new issue went to print, Malcolm Forbes, the second-generation head of Forbes magazine, was still arguing rankings with his editorial team over this year's Forbes 400.
Compared to previous years, the most obvious change on the domestic list was the disappearance of Sam Walton.
With his health steadily deteriorating, Walton had formally dispersed and transferred the shares under his name at the start of the year, spreading them among family trusts and his children.
If Walton hadn't transferred his holdings, the retail titan's fortune of over eight billion dollars would have been more than enough to keep him firmly planted at number one on the American wealth list. Now, although next month's global Forbes list would still count the Walton family as a single unit, the top spot on the domestic list had become a question everyone was watching closely.
During this period, Malcolm Forbes had received countless calls fishing for the answer. Many tycoons wore a calm, indifferent mask, but in truth they cared very much about their ranking. As the world's most authoritative wealth list, Forbes treated the final numbers with extreme caution.
After careful investigation, cross-checking, and endless debate within the editorial team, the new list was finally locked in. Malcolm Forbes also understood that this year's ranking was destined to ignite controversy.
Saturday, September 9.
With the release of the new issue of Forbes, Malcolm Forbes's phone began ringing nonstop early that morning at his home in the wealthy Far Hills enclave outside New York. Many callers opened with the same first line: "Mal, are you joking with us?"
The Forbes list, of course, was no joke.
But the name of a certain young man sitting at the very top of this year's list was simply too glaring for far too many people.
Beverly Hills.
Inside the villa at the Trousdale Estate, just after five in the morning West Coast time, Simon started getting calls from every direction, congratulating him on taking the number one spot on this year's list. Even Sophia in France and Janet in Australia called.
He'd scheduled a weekend of overtime, intending to push through and finish Batman's postproduction in one go. But the chaos of that morning ensured this weekend would be anything but quiet.
After breakfast, Simon's car had barely pulled away from the gate when reporters who'd been squatting outside surged after him, tailing him all the way until his car entered Warner Bros. Studios, only then giving up. The moment he arrived at the postproduction center on the lot, Terry Semel appeared in front of him, offering the same round of congratulations, and casually asking if Simon had time to grab lunch.
With no real business to discuss, Simon had no interest in having lunch with another man, so he declined.
After a bit of small talk, Terry Semel left. Before Simon entered the Batman workroom in the postproduction center, his driver handed him a copy of Forbes.
Simon gave instructions to the staff, whose looks had taken on an extra edge of curiosity, then sat down in the office chair and flipped the magazine open. He had no interest in a long ranking list. He only looked at the top ten, which the magazine had highlighted across a full page.
[Number 1: Simon Westeros, $6 billion, 21.Number 2: John Kluge, $5.2 billion, 76.Number 3: Warren Buffett, $4.2 billion, 59.Number 4: Sumner Redstone, $2.88 billion, 66.Number 5: Ted Arison, $2.8 billion, 65.Number 6: Donald Newhouse, $2.7 billion, 61.Number 7: Samuel Newhouse, $2.7 billion, 60.Number 8: Anne Cox Chambers, $2.55 billion, 69.Number 9: Barbara Cox Anthony, $25.5, 66.Number 10: Ross Perot, $2.4 billion, 59.]
A group of top tycoons with an average age over sixty, and suddenly, at the front of them all, a twenty-one-year-old kid. It really was blindingly conspicuous.
To achieve something like this in just three years, pretending he wasn't happy would be pure affectation.
But Simon didn't keep reading. He quickly threw himself into the day's work.
Six billion dollars was indeed not far from his actual net worth, but it was still nowhere near the target he'd set for himself. At the very least, on the global rich list, he probably still wouldn't make the top ten this year. And his goal was not merely to break into the global top ten, not even simply to take the number one spot.
He had never forgotten what he'd said to Janet on his nineteenth birthday, out in the suburbs of Phoenix, a moment of youthful swagger.
Since he'd been given a second life, simply being the best didn't match his expectations. He wanted to reach a height so high that everyone else would have to look up.
Simon began his workday as calmly as ever, but across North America and even the world, the media erupted into a frenzy over the news that he'd taken the top of the Forbes 400.
The number one spot was always the one people cared about most.
Just like the Forbes lists in later years, the whole world knew Bill Gates held the top spot for ages. But if you asked who was second or third, most people couldn't answer cleanly.
With Simon's rise to number one, the immediate reaction from the major outlets was almost uniformly skeptical.
Everyone already believed Simon Westeros was very rich. But a twenty-one-year-old who hadn't inherited his wealth, who in just three years had become America's richest man with a net worth of six billion dollars? How was that even possible?
And yet compared to last year, Forbes provided far more detailed data this time, even digging up some assets Simon had thought he'd hidden well.
Among Simon's personal assets, the most obvious was still that batch of tech stocks.
After the large-scale sell-off earlier in the year, the remaining nineteen tech holdings included losers like AMD. But the two biggest positions in Westeros Corporation, Microsoft and Intel, had continued rising over the past six months.
Compared to the numbers after the sell-off at the start of the year, the overall value of Westeros Corporation's tech portfolio had increased by 13% in half a year, reaching a total of $1.77 billion.
The second asset was Cersei Capital.
In recent months, the Japanese had been leaking more and more information, intentionally or not, and Cersei Capital's operating condition gradually became known to more people.
With Cersei Capital's net asset value exceeding three billion dollars, Forbes judged that Simon owned no less than one-third, which meant another one billion.
The third asset was Simon's extensive real estate.
This was also what surprised Simon.
Forbes had uncovered information on several buildings he'd purchased in Manhattan east of Madison Avenue, along with the land attached to them. His European real estate investments were also counted. Add in his luxury homes in Los Angeles, New York, and other cities, and Forbes estimated the total value of his property holdings at a staggering $400 million.
The fourth asset was a series of private company stakes held through Westeros Corporation.
Cisco, AOL, and even the Ygritte company, founded only a few months ago, were all included, along with Gucci, the luxury brand.
Cisco had recently begun to show momentum, and Gucci's revival over the past half year was plain for anyone to see.
Forbes valued this collection of private holdings at $300 million.
Just those four categories alone added up to nearly $3.5 billion.
Next came the fifth asset, and naturally the most important one: Daenerys Entertainment.
Forbes specifically listed Daenerys Entertainment's current assets:
Daenerys, New World, and Highgate, three film labels with a long string of box office hits;Daenerys Television, with multiple reality shows pulling in huge profits;a 30% stake in Blockbuster, with more than 750 video rental and sales outlets;
Marvel Entertainment;
Pixar Animation Studios;
Daenerys Visual Effects;
Blizzard Studio;the Daenerys Studios complex under construction in Malibu, and the Daenerys Entertainment headquarters building in New York;
a toy factory in Rhode Island;
Then came a comparison to the asset list of Columbia Pictures, which Sony had just finished acquiring.
Sony paid a total price of $5 billion and received only the Columbia and TriStar labels, a film and television library of more than 4,000 titles, the Loews theater chain with 820 screens, and five local TV stations.
The Columbia and TriStar labels were clearly far less vibrant than Daenerys Entertainment's three active labels: Daenerys, New World, and Highgate.
The library of over 4,000 film and television rights might have been Columbia's greatest advantage, but the income it generated each year through home entertainment operations, VHS and television broadcasts, likely still didn't match what Daenerys Entertainment made from just one or two of its box office hits.
Those assets were more about potential secondary development rights and a long, slow foundation.
The Loews theater chain was fully owned by Columbia, but with only 820 screens, it was a drop in the bucket compared to North America's total of more than 23,000 screens. By contrast, Blockbuster had already expanded its market share to nearly 10% over the past half year.
As for local TV stations, in an industry acquisition back in March, Ron Perelman, eager to push into media, had bought twelve local stations for only $100 million. Even counting their debts, the total value of that deal was under $200 million.
The national broadcast networks in North America were built largely on these local stations. Each of the three old giants, ABC, NBC, and CBS, had more than 200 affiliate stations.
It was easy to imagine that the value of Columbia's handful of stations was not very high.
In addition, Daenerys Entertainment had already begun building its own studio complex. Columbia Pictures didn't even have its own studio lot. If Sony wanted to revive the old company's operations, it would still have to spend more money to buy a lot.
By comparison, if Sony was willing to pay $5 billion for Columbia, then a fast-expanding, full-of-life Daenerys Entertainment naturally wouldn't be worth less, and might even surpass Columbia.
Considering that Sony had paid almost double as a premium to acquire Columbia, Forbes valued Daenerys Entertainment at no less than $3 billion.
Finally, after repaying part of the debts that came due earlier in the year, Simon's total liabilities had dropped to under $800 million.
Taking all of this into account, Forbes rounded the numbers and gave Simon Westeros an estimated personal net worth of $6 billion.
The statistics Forbes produced were solid and well-argued, but media controversy didn't shrink in the slightest.
Aside from the tech stocks Westeros Corporation held publicly, which were easy to quantify, the valuations Forbes assigned to Simon's other assets became the main battleground for debate.
Over the next few days, a flood of discussions and articles about the Forbes list poured out, filling television screens and newspaper pages of every kind.
"Is Daenerys Entertainment really worth three billion dollars?"
"What is Simon Westeros planning to do with the Manhattan property he bought?"
"Media tycoon John Kluge accuses Forbes of inflating Westeros's net worth to chase attention."
"Inside the profit split of Cersei Capital."
"Former Motorola chairman Robert Galvin: Selling Motorola stock was Simon Westeros's biggest mistake."
"Mapping Westeros Corporation's tech investment empire."
"Australia's Qintex Group makes a $1 billion acquisition offer to MGM."
"The best time to buy the dip: Westeros bullish on the global real estate market."
"Chicago police crack 'psychic training class' scam, $10,000 weekly tuition, illegal profits exceed $2 million."
"..."
"..."
Simon's visibility was already sky-high. With the media whipping itself into a frenzy around the Forbes list, he became the hottest figure in North America in just a few days. Some outlets were already predicting whether Simon Westeros would become Time magazine's Person of the Year.
This world never lacked blind followers.
No matter how the platforms argued and fought, Simon Westeros taking the top spot on the American wealth list with a net worth of six billion had already become an established fact.
And so, as the talk about Simon's personal fortune kept spreading, the tech sector of the North American stock market and Japan's still surging market both saw a flood of new investors in a very short time.
Hollywood, the foundation of Simon's rise, once again became an object of intense capital attention.
After the 1987 crash, Hollywood had truly gone through a difficult stretch. De Laurentiis Entertainment, Cannon Films, and other mainstream second-tier film companies went bankrupt one after another. But with the new Forbes rich list exposed, and Simon's achievements laid out in black and white, a mass of capital forces who still clung to fantasies about the film industry began to stir again.