Beal is the founder and president of Beal Financial, a bank holding company that controls more than $31.6 billion in assets as of September 30, 2023. The Beal group of companies also has $4.3 billion in combined capital. The billionaire owns most of Beal Financial and has collected billions of dollars in dividends from its banks.
The majority of Beal's fortune is derived from the proceeds he's collected from Beal Financial, a bank holding company. He owns 96% of the business after selling a 4% stake in 2006, according to media reports. Its valued using the September 30, 2023 equity value and the average price-to-book value multiple of three publicly traded peer companies: Texas Capital Bancshares, Capitol Federal Financial and Old National Bancorp.
Based on disclosures to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve Bank, Beal has collected more than $6 billion in dividends from 1993. Beal also raised $74 million in a sale of preferred stock in 2006. At least $1.3 billion in funds went to capitalize subsidiary Beal Bank Nevada -- now Beal Bank USA -- in 2004.
The majority of his other investments are deemed to be kept within Beal Financial, given Beal's statement in 2011 to Bloomberg News that he doesn't like to invest in equities or hedge funds. The group has assets of more than $31.6 billion and combined capital in excess of $4.3 billion as of September 30, 2023, according to its website.
Jim Chambless, a spokesperson for Beal, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
A native of Lansing, Michigan, Beal built a multibillion-dollar fortune from scratch, first as an investor in run-down buildings, then through Beal Financial, a bank holding company with which he made successful bets on the U.S. mortgage industry.
As a teenager, Beal earned money fixing and reselling television sets and excelled on the debate team in high school. When he was 19 he bought his first property, a house in Lansing, for $6,500. He then rented it out for $199 a month, according to a biography of Beal on his website andrewbeal.com. He attended both Michigan State University and Baylor University, which he left to focus on his business career.
A self-declared libertarian, Beal has utilized government guarantees on loans to hedge his investments since 1976, when he bought a Waco, Texas, building from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development agency for $217,000. He later bought two apartment buildings from HUD in Newark, New Jersey, for $25,000 and sold them two years later, in 1983, for $3.2 million.
Beyond housing, Beal has turned distressed assets into a specialty. He bought jetliner-backed debt after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, loaned funds to troubled Trump Casinos in 2005 and purchased mortgage loans during the financial crisis of 2008. A former FDIC official described Beal Financial to Bloomberg Markets magazine in 2011 as an FDIC-insured hedge fund. In 2006, Beal sold four percent of the company, raising $74 million.
Beal is an accomplished poker player -- he counted cards during college and won $10.6 million in 2004, in what was then the world's richest poker game. In 2015, two pro poker players said Beal lost $5 million in a match at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, according to CardPlayer.com, an online poker magazine.
He also applies his mind to pure mathematics. In 1993, he issued a standing award of $100,000 to the person who can prove or disprove the Beal Conjecture: if AX + BY = CZ, where A, B, C, X, Y and Z are positive integers and X, Y and Z are all greater than 2, then A, B and C must have a common prime factor.
He founded Beal Aerospace to commercialize space cargo transport in 1997 and abandoned the business in 2001 in the face of NASA reversing plans to outsource all its rocket-based cargo.
His ex-wife Simona, with whom he had four children, filed for divorce in 2010, according to court records in Dallas. A resident of Dallas, Texas, Beal collects stock cars and drives them with his son and friends, including actor-turned-poker pro Gabe Kaplan and casino billionaire Steve Wynn.