George B. Kaiser was born on the 29th July 1942, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, and is a businessman who is best known for being the chief executive officer of holding company BOK Financial Corporation. He is also widely known as a co-owner of NBA team Oklahoma City Thunder, as well as the founder and owner of the GBK Corporation, apart from being the president of Tilco Inc and founder of Argonaut Private Equity.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth this veteran businessman has accumulated so far? How rich George Kaiser is? According to sources, it is estimated that the total amount of George Kaiser’s net worth, as of early 2017, is over $7.8 billion, currently ranking him at No. 61 on the Forbes 400 list. It has all been acquired through his career in banking and the oil business, which has been active since 1969.
George Kaiser Net Worth $7.8 billion
George was born into a family of Jewish immigrants, and besides American, is also of German ancestry. After finishing Central High School in his home town, George relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he enrolled at the prestigious Harvard University from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964. He continued his education, and in 1966 obtained his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, after which he moved back to Tulsa where he began his career at Kaiser-Francis Oil Co. – a company founded in the early 1940s by his father and uncle. This engagement provided the basis for George Kaiser’s today impressive net worth.
In 1969, George became the key man of Kaiser-Francis Oil Company after his father’s withdrawal from the chairman position. Ever since, George has been serving as its principal owner and president and is the person responsible for transforming the company from a small, private drilling firm to an international conglomerate, one of the biggest in the oil and energy exploration fields, with an annual revenue of over $217 million. Apart from this, George is involved in several other gas and oil companies including Kaiser Midstream LLC, GBK Corporation as well as Excelerate Energy. It is certain that these ventures have massively impacted George Kaiser’s wealth positively.
In 1990, George directed his professional endeavors towards banking business, after he had bought the Bank of Oklahoma (later rebranded as BOK Financial Corporation) which at that time was just a $2 billion company with 20 branches based in Oklahoma. Under the careful guidance and pragmatic leadership of George Kaiser, BOK dramatically expanded to be one of the largest banks in the States, worth more than $23.9 billion and currently operating in nine states. Due to owning the 61.5% of BOK stocks, Kaiser’s net worth revolved around $12 billion in 2008, but because of the global financial crisis, has been reduced to today’s $7.8 billion
Besides all these, George Kaiser is also the founder of the Argonaut Private Equity capital firm which is focused on investing in energy, telecommunications, healthcare services as well as technology and consumer electronics, and he also serves as the president of Fountains Continuum of Care Inc., a company focused on providing personal and residential healthcare. Doubtlessly, all these successful business ventures have massively contributed to the size of George Kaiser’s rather impressive net worth.
When it comes to his personal life, George Kaiser has married twice. From his first marriage, with Betty Eudene, he had three children and five grandchildren. After Betty’s death in 2002, George later married a founder of Brady Craft Alliance and an expert on fiber art, Myra Block, with whom he resides between their residences in his home town and San Francisco, California.
Apart from all those already mentioned above, George Kaiser is the founder of George Kaiser Family Foundation which has so far donated over $118 million to various charity causes, primarily in education, healthcare and community-development programs, including Family & Children’s Services, Community Health Connections, The Clayton Family Foundation and Community Action Project of Tulsa County among plenty of others.
