How Kenneth built the fortune
Ken Langone's money comes from two related skills: raising capital and spotting people worth backing. In the late 1970s he was approached by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, two executives who had just been fired from a California home improvement chain. Langone helped them put together the financing for a new kind of store: a huge warehouse stocked with tens of thousands of products and staffed by people who could explain how to use them. He joined as a co-founder and director, and the first Home Depot stores opened in Atlanta in 1979.
The company went public in 1981 and grew into the largest home improvement retailer in the world. Langone's early shares, held through decades of expansion and stock splits, became the foundation of his fortune. He stayed on the board for many years and remained one of the company's most prominent shareholders long after it had become a fixture of American retail.
His second source of wealth is Invemed Associates, a New York investment banking and brokerage firm he founded in 1974. Through Invemed he took stakes in and helped finance a range of growth companies, giving him a steady flow of deals and an income stream independent of Home Depot.
Langone's style as an investor has always been personal. He has said he backs people more than business plans, and the Home Depot story is the clearest example: he committed to Marcus and Blank when they had no jobs and no stores, and he persuaded other investors to follow. That willingness to take an early, concentrated position and then stay patient for decades is the common thread running through both halves of his fortune.
Companies and holdings
Langone's best known holdings and roles include:
- The Home Depot, which he co-founded and served as a director
- Invemed Associates, his investment firm, which he leads as chairman
- board seats at several public companies over his career, including General Electric and the New York Stock Exchange
His time on the New York Stock Exchange board placed him at the centre of the 2003 controversy over the pay package of then chairman Richard Grasso. State authorities later sued over the compensation, and Langone defended the decision publicly; the claims against him were ultimately dismissed. He has also invested in restaurant and consumer businesses and backed other entrepreneurs through Invemed.
Early life and career
Langone was born in 1935 and grew up in Roslyn Heights on Long Island, the son of a plumber and a cafeteria worker. He paid his way through Bucknell University with odd jobs and help from family, earning a degree in economics, and later studied at night for an MBA at New York University while working on Wall Street.
His breakthrough as a banker came in 1968, when as a young executive at R.W. Pressprich he won the job of taking Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems public. The offering was a major success and made Langone's name in the industry. Six years later he struck out on his own with Invemed, and within a few years he was sitting across the table from Marcus and Blank, preparing to help launch the retailer that would define his career.
The EDS deal also taught him how much value could be created by owning a stake in a fast-growing company early rather than earning fees on its transactions. When he founded Invemed, he combined traditional brokerage and underwriting with principal investments of the firm's own capital, a mix that suited his instinct for identifying entrepreneurs before the broader market noticed them.
Philanthropy and public life
Langone's largest gifts have gone to New York University, especially its medical centre. In 2008 he and his wife Elaine committed a major donation and the institution was renamed NYU Langone Medical Center, later NYU Langone Health. In 2018 the couple and other donors funded a plan to make tuition free for all students at NYU's medical school, a move intended to widen access to medicine and reduce graduate debt.
He has also supported Catholic causes, Italian American organizations and hospitals in the New York area, and he is an active donor to Republican candidates. Langone has written a memoir about his career and has been an outspoken defender of free enterprise and private philanthropy in interviews and opinion columns, often drawing on his own working-class background as a reference point.