Walton is the widow of John T. Walton, the second son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. After John's death in 2005, she and her son Lukas became beneficiaries of her husband's fortune, giving her ownership of about 2% of the world's biggest retailer that had revenue of $611.3 billion in the year to Jan. 31, 2023.
Walton's fortune is derived mostly from her interest in Walmart, the world's largest retailer. The shares are controlled through the Walton Family Holdings Trust as well as Walton Enterprises, a family holding company.
She's credited with a 1.9% stake, which she received from the estate of her late husband, John T. Walton, who died in 2005 and left the fortune to his wife, their only child and charitable trusts. The stake is calculated using the assumption that Walmart co-founder Sam Walton split the shares he owned equally among his four children -- Rob, Alice, Jim and John. The split between mother and son is based on will documents that were unsealed by a Wyoming court and obtained by Bloomberg in November 2015.
She's also calculated to own a 4% interest in Walton-owned Arvest Bank, Arkansas's largest commercial bank, that is also controlled by the estate, according to a December 2010 filing to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Closely held Arvest has a book value of about $1.8 billion, according to a Dec. 31, 2022 filing with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and is valued using the average price-to-book value multiple of two publicly traded peer companies: Fifth Third Bancorp and UMB Financial.
Since the death of Sam Walton in 1992, John T. Walton and his estate have collected more than $14 billion in dividends and sales of Walmart and First Solar stock. She's credited with about $2 billion of that, based on an analysis of Bloomberg data, as of June 2021. The net value of those investments is based on an analysis of those proceeds, as well as taxes, market performance and philanthropy.
Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for the Walton family, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Christy Walton was born in February 1949. She is the widow of the late John T. Walton, the second son born to Walmart founder Sam Walton. A Green Beret veteran who was awarded the Silver Star after serving in the Vietnam War, Walton died in 2005 when he crashed his experimental ultralight aircraft in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Before his death they purchased a Victorian house in National Park, California, which she gave to charity in 2006. She also listed their Wyoming home for $12.5 million seven years later. The couple had one son, Lukas, who fought cancer as a child, attended Colorado College and inherited about a third of his father's estate, according to Walton's will documents that were unsealed by a Wyoming court and obtained by Bloomberg in November 2015.
Christy received an award for her role as producer of the film "Bless Me, Ultima" from the Imagen Foundation.