Ziff family
Net worth 15 billion
William Bernard Ziff Sr. partner with Bernard Davis (who later sold his shares to Ziff) and founded a publishing house called Ziff-Davis in 1927. When he died in 1953, his son William B. Ziff Jr., sold (1984) most of his magazine titles for $712.5 million. He still kept a handful of them, including PC Magazine, which he bought in 1982 and went on to become the industry’s bestselling journal.
In 1994, Ziff Jr. sold the hobbyist magazine publisher to Forstmann, Little & Company for $1.4 billion. The father had intended to pass on the business to his sons Dirk, Robert, and Daniel Ziff but they were uninterested. Instead, they established Ziff Brothers Investments in New York City, where they invested their inheritances broadly across equities, debt, real estate, commodities, private equity, and hedge funds.
They also gave fund manager Daniel Och seed money in exchange for a 10% interest in Och-Ziff Capital Management, which went public in 2007. Ziff Brothers Investments was disbanded in 2014, and the brothers now invest independently.
Och-Ziff has renamed Sculptor Capital Management.
The World Surf League, the major organization for professional surfers, is owned by Dirk Ziff.
