Forbes Media LLC

Who owns Forbes?
Integrated Whale Media Investments, a Hong Kong investment group, owns roughly 95 percent of Forbes Media since 2014. The Forbes family holds about 5 percent, plus board seats and Steve Forbes's chairman and editor-in-chief roles.

Is Forbes publicly traded?
No. Forbes Media is private. A 2021 plan to list through a SPAC at a $630 million valuation collapsed in 2022, and subsequent sale attempts in 2023 and 2024 also failed.

Where is Forbes headquartered?
Forbes Media is headquartered in the Newport section of Jersey City, New Jersey, where it moved in 2014 after decades on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

How does Forbes make money?
Through advertising and branded content, licensed international editions and events, affiliate commerce businesses like Forbes Advisor and Forbes Marketplace, and the ForbesBooks publishing imprint. Exact revenue is not disclosed but is estimated in the low hundreds of millions.

Who is the CEO of Forbes?
Sherry Phillips has been CEO since January 2025, succeeding Mike Federle. Steve Forbes, grandson of the founder, continues as chairman and editor-in-chief.

Is Forbes still family owned?
Only partially. The Forbes family retains a roughly 5 percent stake and the editor-in-chief role, but majority control passed to Integrated Whale Media in 2014 after the family sold most of the company.

How many countries publish Forbes?
More than 40 licensed international editions publish under the Forbes name through local partners, covering markets from India and Japan to Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Bertie Charles Forbes emigrated from Scotland to New York and became one of the country's leading financial journalists before founding Forbes in September 1917 with Walter Drey. The magazine's founding philosophy was to cover business through people, profiling the "doers and doings" of American commerce.

The company stayed in family hands through the twentieth century. B.C. Forbes's sons Bruce and Malcolm took over; Malcolm Forbes, publisher from 1957, transformed it into a celebration of capitalism, launched the Forbes 400 rich list in 1982, and used lavish parties, hot air balloons, and the "Capitalist Tool" slogan to make Forbes a cultural brand beyond finance.

Steve Forbes succeeded his father in 1990 and added political prominence, running for the Republican presidential nomination twice while overseeing the magazine. The family also faced the industry's structural decline: print advertising eroded, and Forbes pivoted harder than most into digital, building forbes.com into one of the largest business sites and pioneering a large-scale contributor network.

The 2013-2014 sale process changed everything. Encouraged by minority shareholder Elevation Partners, Forbes Media sought buyers, and in July 2014 the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments acquired a reported 95 percent majority. The Forbes family kept about 5 percent, board seats, and Steve Forbes's editorial role. The company moved from its Fifth Avenue headquarters to Jersey City the same year.

Exit attempts have defined recent history. An August 2021 agreement to take Forbes public via the Magnum Opus SPAC at a $630 million valuation, with a planned $200 million Binance investment, was abandoned in 2022. An $800 million sale to Luminar founder Austin Russell was terminated in November 2023 when he could not fund it. Talks with Koch Equity and entrepreneur Divyank Turakhia in 2024 produced no deal. Longtime executive Sherry Phillips became CEO in January 2025, and as of late 2026 the company remains IWM property still informally on the market.

Forbes journalism has won numerous business press awards over its history, including Gerald Loeb Awards for business reporting. The magazine's list journalism, particularly the World's Billionaires and Forbes 400 franchises, is recognized globally as the standard public accounting of wealth, cited by financial media, academics, and governments.

Editorial independence under foreign ownership has been the longest-running scrutiny point. Documented instances of interference in China-related coverage raised questions about IWM's influence, and the failed Binance investment during the SPAC process drew additional attention to funding sources. The company responded by formalizing separation between business and editorial operations.

The contributor network era produced sustained criticism for quality control: thousands of lightly edited contributors publishing under the Forbes name diluted trust, a problem the company has spent years tightening through reduced contributor counts and more editorial review.

The 30 Under 30 lists drew reputational hits when high-profile listees, most notably Sam Bankman-Fried and several others, were later criminally charged. Forbes added vetting and published retrospectives on the problem, while defending the lists' overall record.

The aborted sales were themselves controversies of governance: the 2023 Russell deal's collapse was unusually public, with the company confirming termination by internal memo, and each failed exit renews speculation about the company's finances and future.