Laurie is the youngest daughter of James "Bud" Walton, co-founder of Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer by sales. After Bud's death in 1995, Nancy inherited half of her father's stake in the publicly traded Bentonville, Arkansas-based company. Her older sister, Ann Walton Kroenke, inherited the rest of the family's stake.
The majority of Laurie's fortune is derived from her stake in Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer by sales, according to the Global Powers of Retailing report. She doesn't have to disclose her ownership in the company because she owns less than 5% of Wal-Mart's outstanding stock. The billionaire inherited the interest from her father, James 'Bud' Walton, who died in 1995.
Walton owned about 40 million shares of the retailer at the time of his death, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Laurie inherited half of this stake, according to a person familiar with the family's assets who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Nancy's sister Ann is credited with the other half. The calculation accounts for a three-for-one stock split in 2024.
She was the owner of the Columbia, Missouri-based Providence Bank, which she sold to First Mid Bank in February 2021, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Laurie received $117 million cash and 1.3 million shares in First Mid Bank in return. The proceed is included in the cash holding calculation.
The value of her cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Nancy Walton Laurie is the youngest daughter of James "Bud" Walton, who opened the first Wal-Mart retail store in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, with his brother, Sam. At the time of Bud's death 33 years later, Wal-Mart had become the world's largest retailer. She inherited about half of the shares when her father died in 1995. Her older sibling, Ann, received the rest.
Laurie graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Memphis, where she met her husband, Bill Laurie. He was the starting guard on the Memphis basketball team that played in the 1973 NCAA Championship game.
The billionaire started a New York-based dance group called the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet as well as the Columbia Performing Arts Centre, a dance studio located in Columbia, Missouri. She owned the St. Louis Blues professional ice hockey team with her husband from 1999 to 2006.
The couple has one daughter, Paige, and live in Henderson, Nevada, as well as Los Angeles. Their daughter returned her college degree from University of Southern California in 2005, after her former roommate, Elena Martinez, told ABC News's "20/20" that she was paid $20,000 to write term papers and assignments for Paige.