Tyson Family Stock Nears $3 Billion; Waltons No. 1 On Top Stockholders List

John Tyson, shown here in a photo from last December, and his brother’s widow, Barbara Tyson, own stock in Tyson Foods Inc. that was valued at almost $3 billion as of Nov. 7. | (Photo by Jason Burt)

(A correction has been made to this article. See end for details.)

A billion dollars is a rounding factor in the Walton family fortune, where just the stock holdings that are publicly disclosed are worth in excess of $130 billion.

But the second-wealthiest family in northwest Arkansas, the Tysons, saw their stock holdings increase by nearly $1 billion over the past year, and thats no rounding factor. Its an increase of more than 40 percent.

The price of Tyson Foods Inc. stock closed at $41.11 per share on Nov. 7, up from $28 on Nov. 8, 2013. As a result, the holdings of Chairman John Tyson and his uncles widow, Barbara Tyson, increased in value from $2.07 billion to just under $2.97 billion.

Its the second straight year that Tyson stock has zoomed up in value. In October 2012, when Tyson stock was trading at about $16 a share, the Tyson family holdings were valued at $1.15 billion less than the J.B. Hunt familys trucking stock fortune.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. stock has also performed respectably during the past year, but a 9 percent improvement pales compared with Tysons performance. The family of founder J.B. Hunt his widow, Johnelle, and their son J. Bryan Hunt Jr. has stock worth $1.55 billion. (Johnelle Hunt is featured in this week’s Executive Q&A .)

Slumping oil prices sent the value of stock owned by El Dorados Murphy family down from $970 million a year ago to $909 million. It would have been worse had the familys second-largest investment, in Deltic Timber Corp. not enjoyed solid improvement of nearly 7 percent.

The Dillard family solidified its hold on the No. 5 spot with a 34 percent gain in the price of Dillards Inc. stock between Nov. 8, 2013, and Nov. 7, 2014 from $82.46 a share to $110.73. But even that improvement, which sent the value of the familys Dillards stock up by more than $230 million, is a $100 million retreat from the dog days of August, when the stock was trading as high as $125 a share.

Other big winners over the past year: George Gleason, chairman and CEO of Bank of the Ozarks Inc. and his wife, director Linda Gleason. A stock split and a 40 percent appreciation in the stock price sent their fortune above $221 million and placed them at No. 6 on the list.

The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission requires public disclosure of stock held by officers, directors and any person or entity that owns at least 5 percent of the outstanding shares of any publicly traded company.

The information included in Arkansas Business annual list is gleaned from corporate proxy statements and Forms 3, 4 and 5 filed with the SEC. Unless otherwise noted, the shares are owned outright by the person or family listed. Exercisable options and restricted shares are generally not included.

The stockholders on the list can be presumed to have other investments, even in publicly traded companies, that arent made public and therefore arent included in the totals.

(Correction, Nov. 20, 2014: The relationship between John Tyson and Barbara Tyson was incorrect in the original version of this story and has been corrected.)