Rales is chairman and co-founder of Danaher, a manufacturer of wrenches, water quality tests and voting machines. The Washington-based conglomerate had revenue of $31.5 billion in 2022. Rales founded Danaher with his billionaire brother, Mitchell. Rales is also the founder of film production company Indian Paintbrush.
Rales's fortune is derived from his stakes in Danaher and ESAB, publicly traded industrial and medical technology companies.
He owns 4.8% of Danaher, according to an April 2023 form 4 filing, through limited liability companies and directly. His position in Fortive was assumed to be sold after he stopped serving as a director in June 2021, and his position in Enovis was assumed to be sold after he ceased being a significant holder in September 2022.
Most of the shares Rales holds in Danaher are pledged to secure lines of credit. The Danaher line of credit is capped at 25% of the market value of the underlying shares, according to the proxy statement, and 25% of the pledged shares are deducted from his sharecount to account for the credit lines.
Rales received 11.8 million shares of environmental solutions business Veralto Corp after it was spun-out from Danaher in September 2023, according to Bloomberg calculations.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of insider transactions, dividends, taxes and market performance.
His ownership of Indian Paintbrush, best known for production credits on Wes Anderson movies including The Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel, is not separately valued because its value could not be determined.
Anna Cordasco, a spokeswoman for Rales, didn't respond to a request for comment on the billionaire's net worth in June 2021.
Steven Rales was born March 31, 1951, one of four sons of Ruth and Norman Rales, a real estate developer in the Washington area. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, graduating with a bachelor's degree from DePauw University where he also played football. He later earned his law degree from American University. He joined his father's company and became head of the business making investments and making an unsuccessful bid to buy the San Francisco Giants baseball team, according to a 1988 Washington Post story.
In 1989, Steven and younger brother Mitchell struck out on their own and began acquiring diversified businesses through the 1980s, including an aluminum siding manufacturer and a rubber company. Their company eventually became Danaher, which was named after the river in Montana where they fished.
Rales's interest in movies led him to start his own production company, Indian Paintbrush, in 2006. The studio helped produce the Wes Anderson movie "Moonrise Kingdom," which won AFI's movie of the year award in in 2012.
The billionaire collects modern and contemporary art, according to a 2008 Washington Post profile. He has residences in Washington and Mount Desert Island, Maine.