The 50 Wealthiest Bostonians: How We Compiled the List

How We Compiled the List of The 50 Wealthiest Bostonians: We combed through 18,000 pages of documents to calculate these estimates, including annual reports, proxy statements and other SEC filings, court papers, and real estate records. Taxes were subtracted from stock sales when that information was available. To determine the wealth of people associated with privately held companies, we spoke to colleagues, competitors, fundraisers, public relations representatives, attorneys, and gossips, and estimated the value of some private companies by comparing them with similar public ones.