Taking Stock Of The Billions That Belong To The Owners

The owners of the Seattle Mariners have personal stock holdings worth at least $5.7 billion - and possibly far more.

Following are estimated holdings for most of the 16 owners, broken down into four groups: the so-called Nintendo group, Microsoft group, McCaw Cellular Communications group and the "1 percent group," made up of two owners whose Mariner holdings reportedly total about 1 percent.

The figures are incomplete because they don't include investments in private companies. Most of the information was taken from company reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; only companies whose stock is traded publicly are required to file such reports.

In addition, people who are not company officers or who don't own at least 5 percent of a company's stock usually are not included in financial reports.

In two cases, figures were taken from Forbes magazine, which occasionally prints lists estimating the personal fortunes of the world's richest people.

The Nintendo group:

Hiroshi Yamauchi, president, Nintendo of Japan. $1.5 billion (Forbes magazine estimate)

Minoru Arakawa, president, and Howard Lincoln, chairman, Nintendo of America. They represent Yamauchi and don't have personal investments in the Mariners.

The Microsoft group:

Rob Glaser, founder, Real Networks. $2.2 billion in RealNetworks stock as of April.

Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft senior vice president. $460 million in Microsoft stock as of February.

Christopher Larson, an early principal at Microsoft. Financial holdings not available.

Carl Stork, Microsoft executive, and Judith Bigelow, partner in the Seattle law firm Preston Gates & Ellis (a married couple). Stork: $5 million in Infospace.com stock. Other financial holdings not available.

Raymond "Buck" Ferguson, Craig Watjen and Bill Marklyn, former Microsoft employees. Financial holdings not available.

The McCaw group:

John McCaw Jr., co-founder of McCaw Cellular. $1.3 billion (Forbes magazine estimate).

Rufus Lumry, co-founder of McCaw Cellular $243 million in Infospace.com stock as of April.

Wayne Perry, former McCaw Cellular executive, now with Nextlink Communications. $16.1 million in Nextlink stock as of May.

1 percent group:

Frank Shrontz, former Boeing chairman $42 million in Boeing stock and options as of April 1997. (More recent holdings not available.)

John Ellis, former chief of Puget Power and now Mariner chief executive. $3.4 million in stock in three companies: Washington Mutual, Puget Sound Energy and Safeco.