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Barron's: Steve Jobs is worth $20 billion

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
Tom Krazit

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is worth more to his company than any other CEO in the world, as much as $20 billion in market capitalization, according to the annual list of influential CEOs in Barron's Magazine.

In real life, Jobs isn't worth quite that much money, although once you get over a billion, who cares? But were he to leave Apple (willingly or unwillingly), the fallout would cost Apple $16 billion in stock market value, the magazine estimated. In the middle of the Monday trading day, Apple's market capitalization was $82 billion.

The article is behind a paid-subscription wall. But in a free video (for those who don't have any billions) posted on Barron's Web site, associate editor Andrew Bary puts the figure closer to $20 billion. Either way, Jobs is going to have to leave Apple at some juncture, and that day definitely won't be a good day for Apple investors.