Marc Benioff buys Time for $190M; here’s how much he earns per hour

Marc Benioff is buying
Time magazine for $190 million.
Kimberley White/Getty Images

• Marc Benioff and wife Lynne
  Benioff announced Sunday that they’re buying Time magazine for
  $190 million.
• The acquisition will cost Benioff around 21% of the estimated
  $900 million he earned from March 2017 to March 2018, according
  to our calculations, and only about 4% of his total $4.9 billion
  net worth.
• It takes Benioff about two and a half months to earn $190
  million. It would take someone earning the typical US annual
  salary every day more than 11 years to earn that same sum.
• Benioff isn’t the first billionaire to purchase a media title
  — Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in
  2013, and Laurene Powell Jobs acquired a majority stake in The
  Atlantic. 

On Sunday, Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff and wife
Lynne Benioff announced they are buying Time Magazine for $190
million cash as individuals. 

This isn’t the first time Time magazine finds itself in new
hands recently: The move comes not even one year after Meredith Corporation acquired
its namesake company, Time Inc., which also houses well-known
titles including People, Better Homes and Gardens, and
Entertainment Weekly.

Nearly $200 million is a fortune, but to Benioff, it’s not as
much as it sounds. According to Forbes,
his 2018 net worth is $4.9 billion, nearly $1 billion more than
his $4 billion net worth in 2017. That means in just a year, his
net worth increased by $900 million, earning him a spot
on Forbes’ 2017 and 2018 richest people in the
world lists.

Broken down, that’s:

• $102,740 an hour
• $2.47 million a day
• $17.3 million a week
• $75 million a month

According to the Wall Street Journal, Time,
which generated $173 million in revenue in 2017, has an operating
profit of $33 million. At $190 million, the Benioffs purchased
the nearly century-old magazine for more than five-and-a-half
times its operating profit — and around 21% of
Benioff’s estimated earnings over the past year. At $75 million a
month, Benioff’s wealth only had to grow for two and a half
months to be able to afford the deal.

When you look at Time’s purchase price compared to
Benioff’s total $4.9 billion net worth, it cost him a measly
3.88% of his wealth to acquire the magazine.

To put things in perspective, the median annual US
salary in the second quarter of 2018 was $45,552, according to
data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Benioff makes more
than twice that much in an hour.

As noted above, the $190 million Benioff spent on Time is roughly
21% of his earnings last year. For the median US worker, that 21%
rate is equivalent to $9,565. A person earning the median annual
US salary every day would need 4,171 days, or more than 11 years,
just to be able to afford Benioff’s Time acquisition. 

Benioff may be a billionaire, but these numbers don’t even begin
to stack up compared to how much other billionaires make in an hour.
Other notable billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos,
make Benioff’s $102,739 hourly rate look like pennies.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

Benioff follows in the footsteps of other billionaires — Jeff Bezos bought The Washington
Post for $250 million in 2013, and Laurene Powell Jobs
acquired a majority stake in The Atlantic.

The deal is expected to close in 30 days. As of
September 17, one day following his acquisition announcement,
Benioff’s net worth is
estimated at $6.6 billion by Forbes.