JR Shaw

Net Worth:
$1.61 billion
(▼17.9% from 2017)

Rich 100 rank: #73
Change in rank from 2017: ▼17
Major company holdings: Shaw Communications
Location: Calgary
Age: 83

For investors, seeing insiders buy stock is usually a good sign, and so it is at Shaw Communications, whose 83-year-old founder, JR Shaw, handed over $5.27 million in 2016 to increase his stake in the company to 4.1%. A few months earlier, the family business (son Brad is CEO) announced a deal to unload its media division—mostly broadcast assets picked up from Canwest Global Communications in 2010—to Corus Entertainment for $2.65 billion in cash and shares. (JR Shaw is also a major Corus shareholder.) Increasingly, it is wireless that is furnishing the earnings at Shaw Communications, though Shaw still represents an estimated 20% of the Canadian cable television market.

In the role of executive chairman of Shaw Communications, JR Shaw is one of the most generously compensated executives in Canada, earning $13.2 million in fiscal 2015.

Updated Thursday, November 9, 2017