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From Kylie Jenner’s web of lies to a fighter-jet-flying payments tycoon to the heartbreaking final months of former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Forbes writers illuminated the lives of some of the world’s wealthiest people this year. Here are our favorite stories from 2020 about the country’s billionaires and near billionaires.
Kylie Jenner
Getty Images
While Kardashian clan member Kylie Jenner won praise for selling the majority of her Kylie Cosmetics to beauty giant Coty Inc. in January for $600 million, Forbes reporters Chase Peterson-Withorn and Madeline Berg homed in on the details of the transaction, which revealed that Jenner’s team had been lying for years about the size of her business.
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In the week following Hsieh’s tragic death from exposure to a house fire in Connecticut, Forbes reporters Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans spoke to more than 20 of his close friends and colleagues and documented the harrowing unraveling of the Zappos cofounder’s life.
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Larry Ellison
Jamel Toppin For Forbes
In a rare interview, Ellison, the cofounder of software giant Oracle who at the time was the world’s fifth-richest person, talked about the president, the pandemic and his $300 million plan to turn his Hawaiian island into a wellness laboratory powered by data. Lanai-grown artisan cucumbers, anyone?
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It’s that rarest of success stories, spun by Forbes reporter Giacomo Tognini: Jared Isaacman taught himself to code and then built a payments company that, against all odds, went public during the pandemic—after he scored a smaller fortune from training fighter pilots.
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Tyler Perry
Ethan Pines for Forbes
Forbes reporter Madeline Berg put together the numbers and told the amazing story behind Tyler Perry’s wildly successful movie and TV empire—one that was long dismissed by the Hollywood establishment.
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I’m a San Francisco-based Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on wealth. I edit mostly, but also write about how the richest get wealthy and how they spend their time
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I’m a San Francisco-based Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on wealth. I edit mostly, but also write about how the richest get wealthy and how they spend their time and their money. I oversee the massive reporting effort that goes into Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires List and the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list. The former gets me to use my rusty Spanish and Portuguese. In 2014, I won an Overseas Press Club award for an article I wrote about Saudi Arabian billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; I also won a Gerald Loeb Award with co-author Rafael Marques de Morais for an article we wrote about Isabel dos Santos, the eldest daughter of Angola’s President. Over 25 years my Forbes reporting has taken me to 17 countries on four continents, from the streets of Manila to palaces in Saudi Arabia and Mexico’s presidential residence. Follow me on Twitter @KerryDolan My email: kdolan[at]forbes[dot] com Tips and story ideas welcome.