NEW YORK — Donald J. Trump is no longer among the wealthiest 400 Americans and may even have a net worth of zero.
So says Forbes magazine, which on Monday released its annual list of the super-rich, a list that makes it clear that the controversial developer and other 1980s high-flyers have crash-landed.
A notable exception was Metromedia founder John Kluge.
The rags-to-riches Kluge expanded his fortune by $400 million to a staggering $5.6 billion, enough to retain his crown as the richest of America's rich.
He is now the world's seventh-richest man, according to Forbes, with five Japanese and a Korean outdoing him.
But most of the top 400 saw their net worth dwindle.
Sixty-four Californians made this year's list.
Overall, the magazine that basks in the business of the rich and famous counted five fewer billionaires this year--down to 66--and dropped 43 people right off its list. Six died, including the magazine's own namesake Malcolm Forbes.
Fifty-three of the Forbes 400 list suffered declines in net worth ranging from $100 million to $880 million, the magazine said in its Oct. 22 edition, released Monday.
For the first time since Forbes began publishing the list in 1982, the minimum net worth required to join the elite ranking dropped, from $275 million in 1989 to $260 million this year.
"With the end of the great 1980s credit binge, capital values almost everywhere are being marked down. Just as homeowners feel less wealthy than a year ago, so do most of the nations' rich," the magazine said in its Oct. 22 issue.
"Trump is the most noteworthy loser," it said. "Once a billionaire, Trump's net worth may actually have dropped to zero." Last year, Trump's fortune was estimated at $1.7 billion. In addition to Trump, the "dropouts" include Merv Griffin, whose Resorts International, which owns the casino next door to Trump's struggling Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., went bankrupt.
Other individuals whose net worth tumbled included Sumner Murray Redstone, owner of the entertainment giant Viacom International Inc., whose fortune dropped from $2.88 billion to $2 billion; publishing-entertainment baron Rupert Murdoch, whose fortune fell by $600 million to $1.1 billion; cable TV mogul Ted Turner, whose worth fell $460 million to $1.3 billion, and convicted Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. junk bond pioneer Michael Milken, whose worth plunged by $570 million to $700 million, largely because of $600 million in criminal penalties and losses from Drexel's collapse early this year.
