Zygmunt Wilf was born on the 22nd April 1950, in (then) West Germany, and is a businessperson and real estate developer, but perhaps best known as an owner of the American Football NFL club the Minnesota Vikings, the position he has held since 2005.
Have you ever wondered how rich Zygi Wilf is, as of late 2016? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Wilf’s net worth is as high as $1.3 billion, an amount earned through his successful career in real estate business. In addition to running a family business, Wilf currently owns an NFL franchise, which improved his wealth.
Zygi Wilf Net Worth $1.3 Billion
Zygi Wilf was born a son of Joseph and Elizabeth Wilf, who both survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII. In the early ‘50s, the Wilfs immigrated to the US from Europe and found a new home in Hillside, New Jersey. Zygi’s father was a quite smart man, and after a short-lived period as a used car salesmen, Joseph and his brother Harry established Garden Homes, a company that purchased and rent-out apartment units in Northern New Jersey.
Zygi went to Fairleigh Dickinson University, from where he graduated with a BA degree in economics in 1971, and later he studied at and graduated from the New York Law School in Manhattan. Wilf then became an attorney, but after a while, he decided to join the family business. He became the head of one of the company’s affiliates called Garden Commercial Properties; at that time the company had four shopping centers in Northern New Jersey, but he managed to upgrade it to over a hundred properties, several large malls, and over 90,000 apartment units around the country in most of the states of the US, plus managing an estimated 25 million sqft in commercial property..
In 2005, Zygi and five of his partners bought the Minnesota Vikings from Red McCombs for the sum of $600 million. As of 2014, Forbes estimates the value of the NFL franchise at $1 billion, which put Minnesota in 21st place in value out of 32 NFL teams. Wilf lobbied for a new stadium, and managed to secure a deal signed by Gov. Mark Dayton in 2012 that the Vikings would be granted a new home, and the brand new $975 million-worth US Bank Stadium was officially opened on the 22nd July 2016.
Regarding his personal life, Zygi Wilf and his wife Audrey have four children together, and they currently reside in Minneapolis. In August 2013, Wilf and his brother Harry were found guilty for breaking civil state racketeering laws, and the New Jersey court order them to pay $84.5 million in compensatory damages, punitive damages, and interest to former partners Ada Reichmann and Josef Halpern.
