Forbes, Malcolm Steve Stevenson, Jr (1947- )

US publishing executive. Since the death of his father in 1990, Forbes has been president and CEO of Forbes Inc., and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, which has become synonymous with its annual lists of the 500 richest people in the world. Under his leadership, the company expanded its publishing ventures, launching the supplements Forbes FY1, and Forbes ASAP, international editions of Forbes magazine, in addition to the quarterly Forbes Media Critic. He is also chairman of Forbes Newspapers, a New Jersey-based chain of suburban weeklies, and American Heritage magazine. On the economic right-wing, and a well-known advocate of tax cutting, he was a candidate for the nomination for president of the Republican Party in 1996 and 2000.

Forbes writes editorials for each issue of Forbes magazine under the heading ‘Fact and Comment’, and is the only writer to have received the Crystal Owl Award four times (given by the USX Corporation to the journalist whose economic forecasts for the coming year prove to be most accurate). In his 1996 campaign for the Republican nomination, he advocated a simplified tax code to encourage individual spending in place of social security and medical benefits. Criticized for spending over $35 million of his own money on the campaign, he withdrew, having won two primaries in Arizona and Delaware. In 2000 he campaigned on the same platform with a proposal for a flat rate tax of 17%, but dropped out after coming third to the then US governor George W Bush and US senator John McCain.

Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Forbes was the eldest of five children. He was educated at the Brooks School, Massachusetts, where he was president of the Young Republicans, and campaigned for his father, US publisher Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Sr, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in New Jersey in 1957. He graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with a BA in history, having been a founding editor of the student magazine Business Today. He saw active service with the National Guard (1970-76), before entering the family publishing business, working as a researcher, and then as a reporter. In 1985 he was appointed by former US president Ronald Reagan to head the Board for International Broadcasting, which oversaw Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, and was reappointed to the position by former US president George Bush. In 1993, with former US congressman Jack Kemp, he founded Empower America, a group dedicated to free market economics.