his net worth is calculated by taking his share of the FMV of the assets he owns. presumably, he could sell his share of the company to a buyer and he would then become liquid.

> he could sell his share of the company to a buyer and he would then become liquid.

What buyer? At the time of the article, he's #79 on Forbes, so there's only 78 potential individual buyers here and they're probably all in the same pickle so far as getting liquidity.

Maybe you're thinking of a merger with some other company. How many companies had 7 billion dollars in liquid assets in 2007 and also thought owning FEV would be the best use of that money? I'm thinking not many, but I really don't have any idea.

He doesn't have to sell to an individual. I'm sure there are a lot more funds, banks and companies with more then that amount of money around. Also he doesn't have to sell to a single entity, but can sell shares to the public market. That said, it still wouldn't be easy and probably tank the market value of his companies.

> That said, it still wouldn't be easy and probably tank the market value of his companies.

Right, my read is that this is what makes the number theoretical

His company has value. As long as he didn’t dump all the shares at once he could surely unwind his stake to the market. We’re not talking about bitcoin or beanie babies here. There’s an underlying asset.

Sure there’s no doubt about that, but the context is that this dude doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his net worth and folks here are somehow judgemental of that

I mean, you could say the same thing about the assets of a hedge fund. But it turns out that if you want to, you can convert most assets to cash. Of course, the more quickly you want to convert, the more money you lose.

Same problem: none of those funds have several billion sitting around they can access. It would crash the market for all other stocks if he offered everything for 3 billion : At half price there are funds with enough assets to liquidate their other holdings and buy. It would send the market down significantly. There just isn't enough free cash in the world to actually buy him out. (free cash meaning money not already allocated to food and other requirements of daily living)

An investment bank could easily find multiple cash buyers for companies of that size who would be willing to pay a premium. They’re like real estate brokers for companies.

As an example, IBM paid $34 billion in cash to buy Red Hat last October, which it paid to Red Hats shareholders. Red Hat was worth $21 billion at the time.

In practice many cash purchases of businesses are funded in part by debt. Companies or investors can borrow money from banks, issue bonds to receive cash, and contribute some of their own cash to out find a cash offer for a company.

He could sell to Berkshire Hathaway, easily.

Sure, there's a discount factor. But the discounte value isn't <1%, not even close.