How Julia built the fortune
Julia Koch's wealth comes from Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. Her late husband, David Koch, and his brother Charles each owned about 42 percent of the business, which their father, Fred Koch, had founded as an oil refining company. When David died in August 2019, his share passed to Julia and their three children, who hold it together.
Koch Industries does not publish its accounts, but its scale is widely reported. Under Charles Koch, who has run the company since 1967, it expanded from refining and pipelines into chemicals, fertilizers, building products, glass, electronics and commodity trading, much of it through large acquisitions. The company is known for reinvesting nearly all of its profits rather than paying them out, which has allowed it to grow steadily without outside shareholders.
Because the company is private, estimates of the value of the family's holding depend on how outside analysts value comparable listed businesses. Julia Koch does not have an executive role at Koch Industries, and Charles Koch and his son Chase lead its management.
Companies and holdings
Koch Industries owns a broad group of operating businesses, among them:
- Flint Hills Resources, a refiner and chemicals producer
- Georgia-Pacific, a maker of tissue, paper, packaging and building products
- Invista, a producer of fibers and polymers
- Molex, an electronic connector manufacturer
- Guardian Industries, a glass and automotive components maker
- Koch Fertilizer, along with trading, engineering and investment units
Outside Koch Industries, Julia Koch and her children made a high-profile purchase in 2023, buying a minority stake in BSE Global, the company that owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, the New York Liberty and the Barclays Center arena. The purchase, made from the team's owner Joe Tsai, was the family's first large public investment outside Koch Industries and gave it a foothold in professional sports and live entertainment in New York.
Early life and career
Julia Margaret Flesher was born in April 1962 and grew up in Indianola, Iowa. She later moved to Arkansas, attending the University of Arkansas, where she studied apparel, and then moved to New York to work in fashion. She became an assistant to the designer Adolfo, whose clients included many prominent New York figures, and worked in his salon for several years.
She met David Koch in New York in the early 1990s, and they married in 1996. The couple lived mainly in Manhattan and had three children, David, Mary Julia and John Mark. During her marriage she became active on the boards of cultural and medical institutions in the city, a role that has continued and expanded since her husband's death.
Since 2019 she has taken on a more visible role as head of the family's branch of the Koch fortune, overseeing its foundation and its investments outside the company while leaving the running of Koch Industries to Charles Koch's side of the family. Her children have also become more involved in the family's philanthropic and investment decisions.
Philanthropy and public life
David Koch was one of the biggest donors to cultural and medical institutions in New York, giving to Lincoln Center, where the former New York State Theater was renamed the David H. Koch Theater, as well as to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. He also gave large sums to cancer research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Julia Koch now chairs the David H. Koch Foundation and has continued this pattern of giving, with a focus on medical research and the arts. She and her children have supported cancer research and hospital projects in New York, building on earlier gifts such as the David H. Koch Center, an outpatient building at NewYork-Presbyterian funded by her late husband. Her giving has also included arts institutions where the family name already appears, such as Lincoln Center, and she sits on the boards of several of the organizations she supports. She has generally avoided the political activity for which the Koch brothers were known, and she gives few interviews.