Forbes Enters New Era With Low-Key Heir

Malcolm Forbes was among the most flamboyant of American businessmen. His son and successor almost surely won’t be.

Like his father, Steve Forbes is a graduate of Princeton University, but the similarities seem to end there. While Malcolm Forbes Sr. loved the limelight, the unpredictable and the outrageous, Steve is low-key, serious-minded and rarely noticed outside the confines of the privatelyowned family company.

“He’s not a swashbuckling figure like his Dad,” said Geoffrey Smith, a former assistant managing editor at Forbes.

With the heart-attack death of his 70-year-old father Saturday afternoon, Steve--formally Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.--will succeed his father as chairman and chief executive of Forbes Inc. and as editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, one of the nation’s most successful and sharp-edged business publications.

Malcolm Forbes’ fortune has been estimated at somewhere between $750 million and $1.25 billion. He has five children, but eldest son Steve stands to inherit 51% voting control of the corporation.

“Father--Pop--always looked to the future,” Steve Forbes, 42, told reporters on Sunday. “He wanted this to remain a family business and it shall . . . We will continue to move ahead as he was doing.”

Steve has three brothers--Robert, Christopher and Timothy--who work in top-level executive jobs for Forbes Inc. and a sister, Moira Mumma, who has no connections to the firm. She is married to a Philadelphia lawyer.

Nonconformist to the end, Malcolm Forbes has instructed that his body be cremated, with the ashes buried at the family-owned island of Lucala in Fiji. He had asked that his tombstone read: “While alive, he lived.”

“Death happens to everyone but we never believed it would happen to him,” Steve Forbes said. “He always defied the odds.”

Malcolm Forbes was known to the world for his balloon races, lavish parties and motorcycle adventures. Even though he seemed to relish the attention that they brought him personally, they also gave his magazine plenty of free publicity.

Admirers also recalled his less-famous but no-less-zany antics. Once he rode his Harley Davidson motorcycle through the hallways of the magazine’s Manhattan headquarters. Startled employees thought that the city had been struck by an earthquake.

He was also remembered as a man who always gave his employees a holiday on the Friday in August closest to his birthday. He was born Aug. 19, 1919.

Though an unlikely duo in terms of personality, Malcolm and his eldest son worked smoothly together, family associates say.

“Malcolm and Steve were a wonderful act together,” said Sheldon Zalaznick, former managing editor of Forbes. “They were very jocular.”

Forbes family watchers say Steve demonstrated mounting confidence over the years as he prepared to assume his father’s responsibilities. As the eldest child, he was carefully groomed for his role in the family enterprise, working on both the business and editorial side of the magazine.

“He’s ready for this,” said Robert Flaherty, another former editor at Forbes. “There’s no challenge to his authority.”

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr. was born on July 18, 1947, putting him on the leading edge of the baby boom generation following World War II. He graduated cum laude from Princeton in 1970--29 years after his father. As an undergraduate, he launched a magazine known as Business Today.

After starting at Forbes magazine, Steve showed great promise as a reporter and writer, recalled editors who supervised him. “There is no question he would have made it on his own (as a journalist),” Zalaznick said. “He is a good, clear, graceful writer.”

Zalaznick and others believe it unlikely that the younger Forbes will tamper with the formula that his father developed for the magazine. Unlike many of its competitors, Forbes magazine often has a caustic edge and makes little pretense of objectivity.

“I’d be astonished if major changes are made,” Zalaznick said. “If something were (seriously) wrong, then now would be a good time to fix it. But nothing’s wrong.”

“It’s such a successful formula,” Smith said. “I think (Steve) will be inclined to keep things the same for awhile.”

One indication of what’s to come may be how Steve Forbes handles his father’s latest ventures, including a provocative magazine for the rich and arty crowd known as Egg that just made its debut. “That magazine is so Malcolm,” Smith said. “I don’t know whether his sons are going to have the same interest in it.”

Though low-key, Steve Forbes is known to have a keen sense of humor. That was on display a couple of years ago at an annual senior-employee meeting at his father’s luxurious estate in northern New Jersey.

It was about the time that news reports first began linking the senior Forbes, who was divorced in 1985, with actress Elizabeth Taylor. As told by Zalaznick, Malcolm Forbes opened the meeting with upbeat remarks about how well the company was doing.

He then turned the show over to his son, who--for once--stole the thunder from his father by cracking: “I can tell all of you here that Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday will not be celebrated as a company holiday.”

“Steve will be fine,” Flaherty said. “He just has to be himself.”