Rocket Companies (RKT) began trading on the NYSE on Thur 6 Aug 20

• Rocket Companies (RKT) downsized offering by 50 mln shares and prices 100 mln share IPO at $18.00 per share, below the expected range of $20-22 per share

Rocket Cos. long-awaited initial public offering finally reveals the vast fortune founder Dan Gilbert has built in a city battered by the last financial crisis.

Shares of the Detroit-based mortgage company rose more than 19% on the first day of trading in New York, pushing Gilbert’s net worth to about $34 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Thursday’s IPO makes Gilbert, 58, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the era of ultra-low interest rates.

Rocket is valued at about $40 billion, more than Bank of New York Mellon Corp. or Ford Motor Co. Gilbert owns an estimated 73% of the firm.

His net worth is more than four times the previous estimate on the Bloomberg index. It means he’s now the 28th-richest person on the planet, ahead of Blackstone Group Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and cosmetics titan Leonard Lauder.

Quicken Loans is the bedrock of Gilbert’s wealth. It’s the largest retail mortgage originator in the U.S., underwriting about $145 billion in 2019. That powered the company to $892 million in net income in 2019. This year -- despite a pandemic -- origination volumes hit a record in March, April, May and June with falling rates encouraging homeowners to refinance.

Rocket’s IPO makes Dan Gilbert the 28th richest person in the world

• Gilbert graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree and got a law degree from Wayne State University, according to the prospectus. He founded Quicken Loans in 1985, then named Rock Financial, and served as its CEO until 2002.
• Gilbert sold Rock Financial in 1999 to Intuit, a software company that renamed it Quicken Loans. Gilbert bought the lender back three years later and kept the new name.

Thursday’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange boosted the net worth of 58-year-old Gilbert to $34.1 billion when the shares closed at $21.51. Quicken, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, originated about $145 billion of home loans last year, according to regulatory filings.

The boost from the Rocket IPO puts Gilbert’s wealth right behind Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, No. 27 in the Bloomberg ranking, and ahead of Colin Huang, at No. 29, the founder and chairman of Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce company backed by Tencent. Huang retired at the age of 33.

It also puts Gilbert ahead of Chinese real estate tycoon Hui Ka Yan, at No. 30, and Laurene Powell Jobs, at No. 31, who inherited the fortune of her husband, Apple founder Steve Jobs, when he died in 2011. Abby Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments, is in the #36 spot.