Wal-Mart Heirs Lose Big

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Benchapple

A Walmart Store

Jeton Hida, Staff Writer

Wal-Mart is one of the largest, if not the largest, retailer in the whole world. What started off as a simple idea to pass savings onto customers by a man named Sam Walton, transformed into a giant corporation in the world of business. Wal-Mart was built on the business strategy of always looking for low prices. This strategy was (and still is) successful to this day. Walton was once named the richest man in the world in the 1980s. Since his death in 1992, the wealth has been inherited by his family. Though it is still one of the most popular stores, Wal-Mart has had better days.

In October, the four members of the Walton family (Christy, Jim, Alice and Rob) watched about $11 billion vanish in a day as the stocks for Wal-Mart plummeted. The four members have a combined wealth of $120 billion; the bulk of the wealth is in the shares that were inherited from the founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton. The four shareholders and some immediate family members are among this year’s worst-performing billionaires. The Waltons started with about $169 billion in 2015. The company’s stock has fallen by about 30 percent this year. As a result, they have lost a total of $41 billion since the beginning of the year.

This was all due to the pressure Wal-Mart has been receiving from other competitors. The company is also expecting shares to fall by about 12 percent in the following year. To make matters worse for the Walton family, Wal-Mart’s biggest competitors, Target and Costco, have seen a spike in growth.