CHARLESTON — Forbes Magazine says the wealthiest man in West Virginia is no longer Gov. Jim Justice, but Brad Smith, president of Marshall and former president and CEO of Intuit Software in Silicon Valley.
Forbes reporter Matt Durot wrote the article.
“We figure he’s worth bout $700 million, which is about $250 million more that Gov. Jim Justice,” said Durot in a conversation on MetroNews Talkline Monday.
Justice had held the top spot for several years, but Durot said the status had changed in the past few years with public reports of tax issues and mounting debt for the governor’s family businesses. Durot said the situation caused Forbes to consider a closer look at who else might be in the running. They arrived at Smith who is also in a very public position as the president of Marshall.
Smith and his wife have been generous to the state of West Virginia through the years, giving millions to Marshall, as well as WVU and other causes in the Mountain State.
“They really focused on entrepreneurship, the environment and education. They really view those three areas as the key to jump-starting the economy there,” he said.
Tracking down the wealth of an individual isn’t an exact science. Forbes only has access to what documents are public, as is required by law of publicly traded companies. Since Intuit was a public company, there was a lot of information about Smith’s holdings, much of which is still tied up in Intuit stock or the sale of that stock in recent years.
“We figure about half of that is stock he still holds or that he’s sold during his time there. It’s a little easier to track a guy like Brad Smith who was the CEO of a publicly held company than it is a guy like Gov. Jim Justice,” he said.
The Forbes profile visited a lot of people who praised for Smith. According to Durot the praise was not just for his work as a CEO, but his overall leadership, his philanthropy and his genuine support of all who meet him.
“He seems like the sort of guy whose ready to get his hands dirty, unlike the flip side of a lot of people we see who make a lot of money and are content to sit on their yacht or whatever, that’s definitely not Brad,” he said.
