Bloomberg Billionaires: Goodnight loses $368M in a week

How would you like to lose $367.8 million in net worth in seven days? Jim Goodnight did — according to Bloomberg news.

CFOs and CEOs across America have complained about a stronger U.S. dollar creating “headwinds” this year. But another factor is hurting them big time now, both in the pocketbook and in doing business: The stock market plunge in China. Among those tech execs suffering big time is Goodnight, CEO of SAS, the 128th richest person in the world according to Bloomberg news.

Bloomberg’s “Billionaires” index makes for interesting reading, calculating the wealth of the world’s richest on a daily basis. And Friday alone was a bad day. As Wall Street churned in New York, the billionaires saw $50 billion in net worth wiped out.

Monday’s massacre in China’s markets most likely means another bad day for the world’s elites today as well.

Goodnight, the richest man in North Carolina, has NOT escaped the recent slaughter.

According to Bloomberg’s estimates of Goodnight’s net worth, the co-founder of SAS software in Cary, lost $367.8 million last week.

That was a nearly 4 percent drop in his fortune, dropping it to $9.1 billion.

Goodnight still richer than on Forbes lists

Despite the losses, Bloomberg’s estimates of Goodnight’s fortune is considerably higher than the better-known Forbes richest lists. Earlier this month, Forbes estimated Goodnight as being worth $7.8 billion, up from $7.5 billion in March.

Bloomberg doesn’t break down how it calculates Goodnight’s net worth. Making matters more challenging is that SAS is privately held, so Goodnight doesn’t have x-million of SAS shares valued at $xxx per share that would make for easy calculation.

As of Monday morning Aug. 24, Bloomberg Billionaires ranked Goodnight No. 128 on its list.

And a review of that list shows that only 43 other billionaires ranked above him lost more money last week. A handful actually made money.

So far, 2015 has NOT been a good year for Goodnight, according to Bloomberg’s calculations. The index says Goodnight has lost$1.9 billion, or 17 percent.

Here’s Bloomberg’s latest boilerplate about Goodnight’s fortune:

“The majority of Goodnight’s fortune is derived from his 66 percent stake in SAS Institute. The world’s largest closely held software company had revenue of $3.1 billion in 2014, a 2.3 percent increase from the previous year, according to the company’s website. It doesn’t publish any other financial information.

“The valuation of SAS is based on the average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiple of four publicly traded peers: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and CA. A premium is applied, based on recent transactions in the software industry. This premium was lowered on March 23, 2015, to reflect the lower multiples more recent deals traded at.

“Goodnight probably has at least $200 million in cash and other investable assets, based on an analysis of dividends, taxes and market performance. That includes his Prestonwood Country Club in North Carolina, which features three 18-hole golf courses.”

Other big losers

Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Google, took a $383.5 million hit. He ranks just above Goodnight at No. 125 on the list with $9.3 billion in assets.

Here is how some of the other top tech billionaires fared last week: