A pair of Port Washington residents were named to Forbes’ 2022 Billionaires list, including Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone.
Langone, a Roslyn Heights native who now lives in Sands Point after years in the Manhasset area of Flower Hill, was ranked as the 438th richest person in the world and grew his net worth from $4.7 billion in 2021 to $5.8 billion in 2022, according to Forbes.
After spending his early years digging ditches for the Long Island Expressway, according to Forbes, Langone made an early investment in Home Depot with fellow billionaires Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus in 1978.
The Sands Point resident’s name is also part of the NYU Langone medical system, which has locations across Long Island and the greater New York City area. His $5.8 billion net worth is the highest among Long Island residents, according to Forbes.
A longtime supporter and donor to the Republican Party, Langone expressed displeasure with former President Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol riots last year.
Langone appeared as a guest on the CNBC program “Squawk Box” in January 2021, telling co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin that he felt “betrayed” by Trump’s actions that led to the riot, including months of rhetoric falsely claiming that he had won the election and a speech the same day as the riot where he implored his supporters to march on the Capitol.
“I think the biggest mistake anybody is going to make is [to] try and rationalize what happened last week, what the president did, and what that crowd did,” Langone said. “There should be no mitigation at all. It was horrible. It was wrong. I’m shocked.”
He also said that he didn’t care if Trump was impeached for his actions, and called actions of Republican members of Congress who voted against confirming Joe Biden’s victory even after the riot “a grandstand play.”
Fellow Port Washington resident Don Vultaggio, the co-founder of Arizona Beverages, also increased his net worth, according to Forbes, going from $3.8 billion in 2021 to $3.9 billion this year. Vultaggio, 70, began his work in the beverage industry by using a van to sell beer and soda throughout Brooklyn, according to Forbes. In 1992, according to Forbes, Vultaggio ditched the suds and shifted to selling iced tea, and used creative labels and taller cans with the creation of Arizona, launched from a warehouse in Brooklyn.
Other Long Island residents included in the Forbes list are Oyster Bay’s Charles Dolan ($5.4 billion), East Hampton’s Katherine Rayner ($5.2 billion), Southampton’s Margaretta Taylor ($5.2 billion), Locust Valley’s Julian Robertson ($4.8 billion), Sag Harbor’s Pablo Legorreta ($3.8 billion), Oyster Bay’s Louis Bacon ($1.6 billion), Locust Valley’s Mitchell Jacobson ($1.3 billion) and Sagaponack’s Axel Stawski ($1 billion).
Forbes said the United States leads the world with more than 700 billionaires in 2022 whose combined net worth exceeds $4 trillion.
