NIGEL W. MORRIS
What did we ever do before credit
cards? Fortunately, thanks to pioneers
like Nigel Morris, co-founder with
Richard Fairbank of Capital One
in 1994, we don’t have to think
about that era. Under Morris’s reign,
Capital One’s customer base grew to
45 million, managed loans increased
to more than $70 billion, and the
company emerged as one of the
top seven issuers of credit cards in
the world. It’s no small wonder that
the London Business School named
this alumnus and grand vizier of Visa
“Entrepreneur of the Year.”
ROGER AND VICKI SANT
As head honcho of Applied
Energy Services Corp (AES), a
global powerhouse, Roger Sant
realized the importance of reducing
his considerable carbon footprint on
Mother Earth; through the Summit
Foundation – run with the aid of wife
Vicki – this charitable couple donated
$20 million to the preservation of
the Amazon rainforests. Power may
have been Sant’s primary focus, but
painting came in a close second; the
Sants are avid art collectors, focusing
on such painters as Édouard Vuillard,
Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis.
In 1999, they provided the National
Gallery the means to establish an
acquisition fund for 19th-century
paintings. With their assets valued at
roughly $800 million, these A-listers
of the art scene have endowed the
Phillips Collection with $9 million,
the National Symphony Orchestra with $10 million and the Smithsonian
Institution with $10 million as well –
if beauty (and its preservation) is truly
in the eye of the beholder, then the
beholder owes much to the Sants. |
CARL D. SILVER
The fierce concentration with
which small boys, often making
onomatopoetic “brrrrrr” sounds with
their lips, playing with toy trucks
doesn’t always portend an $800
million empire later in life. Silver began
making profi table piles in high school
by moving gravel with dump trucks –
and, in quick succession, he “moved”
cars at his own “Silverized” dealerships
and his empire into the theater of real
estate development, where he found
his real genius. The Silver Company,
both family (Carl’s son, Larry Silver,
started coming to work with daddy at
the tender age of ten) and regionally
focused, is most famous for their
Celebrate Virginia project, which spans
2,400 acres and is dubbed “America’s
Largest Retail Resort.” Solidly
grounded in the principles of tradition
and integrity, Silver believes that “when
you give, you also receive”; no false
boast, as his 2006 windfall donation of
$2 million to the new Lloyd F. Moss
clinic for the uninsured poor was the
largest gift it had ever received.
No surprise that the recent
nationwide pet food recall did not
include PEDIGREE products. After
all, “Dogs Rule” – or such is the
trademark of Mars, Inc.’s expanding
pet food line. Mars has always placed
consumers – the two-legged kind
and, more recently, dogs and cats
– fi rst. John Mars is obsessed with
effi ciency, punctuality, and quality
(now you know why Uncle Ben’s
Rice doesn’t stick to the pot and
M&M’s don’t melt in your hands).
Best known as the world’s largest
confectioner, Mars has operations in
65 countries, producing $18 billionplus
in annual sales. Forrest and John
Mars are now retired, but continue
to oversee business from the board
room. Sister Jacqueline keeps busy
with another company, and she also
supports many theatrical productions,
including The WNO. |
RAJENDRA AND NEERA SINGH
The phrase “number crunching”
tends to conjure up visions of
bespectacled men with severe sideparts
and inky fingers rather than
baccarat at Biarritz; however, with a scholarship, $42 dollars in American
currency and a postage stamp, this
husband and wife duo turned a simple
algorithm for wireless consulting into
arithmetic alchemy. Early partners in
Nextel and avid technological crestsurfers
still – they invested in XM radio
and provide cellular service in Latin
America – the Singhs provide the next
generation of dreamers with the same
educational egress they were afforded
through scholarship.
DAN SNYDER
Snyder’s spring break could have
been a permanent one after dropping
out of college at the University of
Maryland; instead, from the glamorous
standpoint of his parents’ bedroom, he
sold bacchanals in Boca and booze
cruises in Cancun to other college
students. Using this as a springboard,
Snyder and his sister started the
eponymous Snyder Communications,
Inc., selling the company in 2000 for
the then unprecedented sum of $2.3
billion. Sports, burgers, music and
roller coasters are common interests
that many twenty-something males
share; however, not many of them
are able to translate that into full and
partial ownership of the Washington
Redskins, Johnny Rockets, Red Zebra
Broadcasting and Six Flags theme
parks. After Tom Cruise’s couchjumping
antics on Oprah, Synder
picked up the slack from Paramount
and inked a 2006 two-year deal
which places him in the enviable
role of “Goose” to Cruise’s erstwhile
“Maverick”; in any case, Snyder’s $800 |
million fortune (as Fortune Magazine
reports) makes him a top gun in
the charity world, as he controls the
Washington Redskins Charitable
Foundation and donates generously
to D.C. program Yards for Youth.
$500 MILLION TO
$750 MILLION
RONNIE ABRAMSON
A card-carrying member of “Greater
Washington 2006 Legal Elite,” so named
by Washington SmartCEO, Abramson
focuses his 30-year legal practice on
mergers and acquisitions, real estate
fi nance, and business and succession
planning, as well as estate planning. He
concentrates on privately owned largescale
entrepreneurial business and owns
a number of buildings on K Street.
Appropriately, he’s a member of the
real estate section of the Washington,
D.C., law fi rm of Buchanan Ingersoll
& Rooney PC. He’s also a doctor; in
2003, The Corcoran College of Art and
Design granted Abramson a doctor of
fi ne arts degree for his distinguished
years as a trustee of the institution. In his
spare time, Abramson sits on the New
York University Council on the Future
of Arts and Science and serves on the
board of the Washington Airports’ Task
Force.
DONALD BROWN, JOE
GILDENHORN AND BENJAMIN
JACOBS
It would be hard to fi nd three guys
who know the Washington landscape
better than Brown, Gildenhorn and
Jacobs. Since 1960, their real estate |
