Pakistani-American Shahid Khan is the Richest South Asian in America

With a net worth of $3.8 billion, Shahid Khan tops the Forbes list of the richest Americans of South Asian origin. Overall, Khan ranks 122nd on Forbes 400 list for 2013, up from 179th in 2012.

L to R: Tony, Ann, Shahid  and Shanna Khan

Born in Pakistani city of Lahore, 63 year old Shahid Khan is a mechanical engineer and a self-made billionaire who built his fortune as a top supplier of bumpers to the auto industry. Khan made history in 2011 by becoming the first non-white owner of a National Football League team when he bought Jacksonville Jaguars. Recently, he acquired an English soccer team Fullham for $300 million.

There are four Indian-Americans on Forbes 400 this year: Syntel chairman and co-founder Bharat Desai and his family, Symphony Technology Group founder and chairman Romesh T. Wadhwani, Google investor Kavitrak Ram Shriram and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, according to India West newspaper.

 Desai, 60, who lives in Fisher Island, Fla., is in 252nd place with a $2.2 billion net worth. He was in 239th place in 2012.

Wadhwani, 66, has a net worth of $2.1 billion, good for 260th place on the Forbes list. The resident of Palo Alto, Calif., was listed 250th last year.

Shriram, 56, a resident of Menlo Park, Calif., and a managing partner of Sherpalo Ventures, is in 325th place with assets of $1.75 billion. He dropped from the 298th spot in 2012.

Khosla, whose Khosla Ventures continues to invest in green energy and other forward-looking technologies, is in 352nd place with a worth of $1.5 billion. The 58-year-old Sun Microsystems co-founder was 328th last year. He lives in Portola Valley, Calif.

Here are some of the highlights of Pakistani-American data from US Census 2010 as gleaned from a report titled "A Community of Contrasts Asian Americans in the United States: 2011" published by Asian-American Center For Advancing Justice:

1. There are 409,163 Pakistani-Americans in 2010, the 7th largest Asian-American community in America.

2. Pakistani-American population doubled from 2000 (204,309) to 2010 (409,163), the second largest percentage increase after Bangladeshis' 157% increase in the same period.

3. 6% of Pakistani-American population is mixed race.

4. 65% of Pakistanis in America are foreign-born. 57% of foreign-born Pakistani-American population is made up of naturalized citizens.

5. There are 120,000 Pakistani legal permanent residents of which 42% are eligible to naturalize.

6. There were 69,202 immigrant visas issued to Pakistanis from 2001 to 2010, the 5th highest among Asian nations.

7. 28% of Pakistanis have limited English proficiency.

8. Average per capita income of Pakistani-Americans is $24,663.00

9. 15% of Pakistanis are classified as poor; only 1% of them are on public assistance.

10. 8% of Pakistanis are unemployed, a figure lower than the general population of Americans.

11. 55% of Pakistanis own their own homes.

12. 55% of Pakistanis have a bachelor's degree or higher.

13. Median age of Pakistanis in America is only 29 years, lower than most of the Asian groups and the national median age of 36.8 years.

Pakistani-American community is the second fastest growing community in the United States, according to 2010 US Census. It is also a very young community with the median age of just 29 years, compared to 32 years for Indian-Americans and 37 years for all Asian-Americans. 34% of Pakistani-Americans are under the age of 17 compared with 26% of Indian-Americans and 24% of  all Asian-Americans.

More of the Pakistanis in America are college educated than the general population of whites and various immigrant groups. The youthful energy and higher education levels of Pakistani-Americans are opening doors for them to rise and shine in America, in spite of the current economic difficulties in their adopted land of opportunities.

Here's a CBS 60 Minutes segment on Shahid Khan:

 Here's a Forbes interview video of Shahid Khan on his path to success:


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Pakistani-American's $112 Million Yacht

Shahid Khan, Pakistani-American owner of an NFL team, has put his luxury yacht up for sale. Asking price: $112 million.

The Pakistani-American owner of Jacksonville Jaguars NFL franchise owns the 223-foot Kismet, a German-made yacht built in 2007. The boat has an expansive bedroom suite, a formal dining salon, disco, teak decks, jacuzzi, sauna and gym. High-end woodwork adorns everything from a beer keg to a motorcycle hatch with crane. There's also a 25-foot Chris Craft boat, Yamaha WaveRunners and other surpasses, according to the Florida Times-Union.



The ship is listed for sale by Moran Yacht & Ship, which charters the Kismet. For those who can't afford the $112 million price, the yacht is available for $600,000 a week plus expenses for Caribbean cruises this winter.



Shahid Khan made history last year by becoming the first ever minority owner of a National Football League team. All 31 other owners of NFL teams are white. Khan paid $760 million to purchase Jacksonville Jaguars. Earlier, Khan had agreed in February 2010 to buy a controlling interest in the St. Louis Rams before billionaire Stan Kroenke exercised an option to purchase the 60 percent of the club he didn’t own.



Shahid Khan, a mechanical engineering graduate of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, made his fortune in the auto business. Almost two-thirds of all North American-built pick- up trucks and sports utility vehicles have bumper systems based on Khan’s designs, according to figures released by the Jaguars. Khan bought Flex-N-Gate in 1980 and the company now has more than 10,000 employees at 48 manufacturing plants with annual sales exceeding $3 billion.

Related Links:

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Pakistani-American: First Non-White NFL Owner

NFL owners are the oldest and whitest of old white guy clubs. Drew Magary

Pakistani-American Shahid Khan made history this week by becoming the first minority owner of a National Football League team. All 31 other owners of NFL teams are white. The deal to purchase Jacksonville Jaguar is for an estimated $760 million and the ownership transfer will be complete Jan. 4, 2012, according to Associated Press. Earlier, Khan agreed in February 2010 to buy a controlling interest in the St. Louis Rams before billionaire Stan Kroenke exercised an option to purchase the 60 percent of the club he didn’t own.

NFL has highly lucrative business because of the extraordinary popularity of football in the United States. Over nine years, starting in 2014, CBS, Fox and NBC will together will pay an average of about $3 billion a year, more than 50 percent higher than their current deals, according to a report in New York Times. Altogether, the four networks, in addition to DirecTV, which pays $1 billion a year for its Sunday Ticket satellite package, will pay the N.F.L. more annually in TV rights than any sports league has ever been paid.



Shahid Khan, a mechanical engineering graduate of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, made his fortune in the auto business. Almost two-thirds of all North American-built pick- up trucks and sports utility vehicles have bumper systems based on Khan’s designs, according to figures released by the Jaguars. Khan bought Flex-N-Gate in 1980 and the company now has more than 10,000 employees at 48 manufacturing plants with annual sales exceeding $3 billion.

Shahid Khan joins the illustrious list of Pakistani-Americans that includes Shering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan, Edible Arrangements Founder & CEO Tariq Farid, former CEO of Healthnet Dr. Malik Hasan, global hedge fund manager Mansoor Ijaz, Founder and Former CEO of AST Research Safi Qureshi, Mayor Haroon Saleem of of Granite Falls, Washington, Hilary Clinton aide Huma Abedin Weiner, novelists Bapsi Sidhwa and Daniyal Mueenuddin, Emmy nominee singer-songwriter Nadia Ali, and many other prominent Pakistani-American business executives, entrepreneurs, public servants, politicians and performers who have made their name in their adopted country.



Although Pakistani-Americans are still a miniscule fraction of the overall US population, their numbers have more than doubled in the last decade due to increased immigration, according to US Census 2010 data. With 100% increase since 2000, Pakistanis are the second fastest growing Asian immigrant group in the United States.



Here are some of the highlights of Pakistani-American data from US Census 2010 as gleaned from a report titled "A Community of Contrasts Asian Americans in the United States: 2011" published by Asian-American Center For Advancing Justice:

1. There are 409,163 Pakistani-Americans in 2010, the 7th largest Asian-American community in America.

2. Pakistani-American population doubled from 2000 (204,309) to 2010 (409,163), the second largest percentage increase after Bangladeshis' 157% increase in the same period.

3. 6% of Pakistani-American population is mixed race.

4. 65% of Pakistanis in America are foreign-born. 57% of foreign-born Pakistani-American population is made up of naturalized citizens.

5. There are 120,000 Pakistani legal permanent residents of which 42% are eligible to naturalize.

6. There were 69,202 immigrant visas issued to Pakistanis from 2001 to 2010, the 5th highest among Asian nations.

7. 28% of Pakistanis have limited English proficiency.

8. Average per capita income of Pakistani-Americans is $24,663.00

9. 15% of Pakistanis are classified as poor; only 1% of them are on public assistance.

10. 8% of Pakistanis are unemployed, a figure lower than the general population of Americans.

11. 55% of Pakistanis own their own homes.

12. 55% of Pakistanis have a bachelor's degree or higher.

13. Median age of Pakistanis in America is only 29 years, lower than most of the Asian groups and the national median age of 36.8 years.

Pakistani-American community is still relatively young when compared with other immigrant groups. More of the Pakistanis in America are college educated than the general population of whites and various immigrant groups. The youthful energy and higher education levels of Pakistani-Americans are opening doors for them to rise and shine in America, in spite of the current economic difficulties in their adopted land of opportunities.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistani-American in $500 Million Deal to Buy St. Louis Rams

Edible Arrangements- A Pakistani-American's Success Story

Pakistani Diaspora World's 7th Largest

Pakistani-American's Game-Changing Vision

OPEN Forum 2010

Is Pakistan Too Big to Fail?

Pakistani-American Elected Mayor

Huma Abedin Calm Amid Twittergate

Silicon Valley Summit of Pakistani Entrepreneurs

Pakistan's Multi-Billion Dollar IT Industry

Media and Telecom Sectors Growing in Pakistan

Pakistan's Middle Class Growth in 1999-2009

Social Entrepreneurs Target India, Pakistan

Pakistani-American in $500 million NFL Deal

What is NFL? It is America's National Football League, the biggest sports franchise business in the world. It's much bigger the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise which is much better known to South Asians. The IPL has particularly been in the news lately for its controversial exclusion of Pakistani cricket players. Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, who criticized Pakistanis' exclusion from IPL, has come under attack by right-wing Hindu extremists who are rampaging through the streets in India, burning theaters screening Khan's latest movie.

Today's media reports indicate that a Pakistani-American Shahid Khan of Illinois is in $450-$750 million deal to buy the NFL team St. Louis Rams. The final price will depend on whether Khan gets 60% or 100% of the stake in the NFL franchise. Khan, 55, is the president of Flex-N-Gate Corp., an auto-parts manufacturer in Urbana, Illinois with $2 billion in annual revenue. He has lived in the Champaign-Urbana area for more than 40 years and is married with two adult children. Khan is a graduate of the School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Flex-N-Gate employs over 9,500 people at 48 manufacturing and 9 product development and engineering facilities throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Khan, 55, and his wife, Ann Khan, live in Champaign. He has given millions of dollars to his alma mater, including funding a 2007 major expansion of the university’s tennis facilities — now called the Shahid and Ann Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex.

To put this deal in perspective for South Asian readers, "Mumbai Indians", the most expensive of the eight IPL franchises, was bought by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani for $112 million.

This season, each of the 32 NFL team owners were limited to $127m in salaries for their entire squad of players. That means some footballers are handsomely paid - Drew Brees, the star quarterback of the recent Superbowl winner the New Orleans Saints, has a six years $60m contract. By contrast, the most expensive IPL players fetch less than a million dollar bids, which are still the highest in the world for cricket players.

Indian cricket has taken a page from the big sports franchises in the West. Forbes magazine reports that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a nonprofit body controlling the game in the country, has racked up $1 billion to date from selling commercial rights to Indian cricket for the next five years. (One source: Nike paid $45 million to flash its logo on players' apparel and to sell garments to cricket fans.) "It's all about extracting the most value," said Lalit Modi, BCCI's new marketing chief, who hopes to eventually make $1.5 billion from Indian cricket, ten times what BCCI made in the last go-around.

In both IPL and NFL, the biggest source of revenue is the sale of television rights, followed by brand name merchandise sales, ticket sales and endorsement deals.

Shahid Khan is obviously an outstanding success story for Pakistani-Americans. Nationwide, Pakistani-Americans appear to be prospering. The US census calculated that mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, while that for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis, was $70,047.

Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a book published by Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, “Portrait of a Giving Community by Professor Adil Najam,” puts the number around 500,000, with some 35 percent or more of them in the New York metropolitan area. Chicago has fewer than 100,000, while other significant clusters exist in California, Texas and Washington, D.C.

New York Times estimate of 109,000 Pakistani-born American workers' occupations include salesmen, managers or administrators, drivers, doctors and accountants as the top five categories.

Pakistani-Americans political participation remains woefully inadequate. But there are some signs that it is beginning to happen at various levels starting from from local communities to state legislatures.


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