All In The Family

After decades building their respective businesses, the Gores brothers are living the American dream

- Justin Rohrlich

When the Gores family left Israel for Detroit in 1968, they were just about broke. It had taken five years to get a visa; sons Elias, Samir, and Tewfic spoke no English. They were promptly given new American names by their aunt, who picked them up at the airport: Alec, Sam, and Tom. A relative set the family up in a small apartment in Flint, Michigan.

Alec, 15, was the oldest of the three. He began working at his uncle’s grocery store the morning after they arrived, bagging groceries for 25 cents an hour. “My father was willing to give up literally everything he had and pack his bags and bring us here,” Alec told a reporter in 2016. “He did it for the kids, to make sure we have a better future.”

That reporter was from Forbes. Because, as it turns out, the man formerly known as Elias—now Alec Gores, founder and CEO of leveraged buyout firm The Gores Group—has a net worth currently estimated at $2.1 billion.

The other brothers haven’t done too badly, either. Sam, who is a year younger than Alec, is chairman of the Paradigm Talent Agency, which represents top-tier talent including Laurence Fishburne, and handled the career of Philip Seymour Hoffman before the actor’s untimely passing in 2014. Tom, the youngest of the three, runs Platinum Equity, a private equity firm in Beverly Hills, and owns the Detroit Pistons basketball team, which he bought in 2011.