Kirsh controls Kirsh Group, a closely held conglomerate with a majority stake in food supply business Jetro Holdings. The College Point, New York-based business has Jetro Cash & Carry and Restaurant Depot stores across more than 30 states in the US. He also has private equity investments and property on four continents.
The majority of Kirsh's fortune is derived from a 75% stake in Jetro Holdings, a New York-based company that manages two U.S. wholesale grocery businesses: Jetro Cash & Carry and Restaurant Depot. The business has annual revenue of more than $10 billion based on a December 2019 Fitch's credit report and subsequent performance by peers.
Jetro and Restaurant Depot operate as sister businesses and their combined value is calculated using the average enterprise value-to-sales multiple of four publicly traded peer companies: Costco Wholesale, Kroger, Metro and Loblaw Companies.
Through Kirsh Group he controls 52% of Sydney-based Abacus Property Group, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, according to its Sept. 16, 2022 stock exchange filing.
The billionaire has real estate on four continents, including London's first office skyscraper, Tower 42, and Birkenhead Point in Sydney, Australia. These properties are valued using either the average dollar-per-square foot rate of recent similar transactions or the income capitalization method, using data from sources including the National Australia Bank, Savills and Knight Frank.
Representatives at the billionaire's family office declined to comment on his net worth.
Nathan "Natie" Kirsh was born in 1932 and raised in Potchefstroom, South Africa, where his family manufactured sorghum-malt. He took over after graduating from the University of Witwatersrand in 1952. He started his own business in nearby Swaziland at age 26, leaving the family company in the hands of his younger brother.
Using a 1,200 pound inheritance from his father and additional funding from contacts at home, Kirsh began milling corn and malt. His company later expanded into a conglomerate which helped reduce the country's dependence on South Africa for food staples. Through an agreement with the government, Kirsh's company was obligated to buy all corn grown in Swaziland and became its only importer of the crop. He maintained close ties with the king and served as chairman of Swaziland's electricity board for 23 years, helping to build the country's power grid and to break down racial segregation at its sporting clubs. Kirsh began eyeing South Africa for a new venture and acquired a wholesale food operation in 1970. Once in control, he transformed it into a cash and carry business that served the country's black-owned local grocery stores.
He expanded into real estate, selling 49 percent of the conglomerate to insurance company Sanlam in 1984. Saddled with real estate loans, he lost most of his fortune in South Africa's 1980s economic crisis, keeping only Jetro, a cash and carry outpost in Brooklyn, New York, that he opened in 1975. At the time, there were just five Jetros operating in major cities along the east coast. Kirsh focused on providing fresh goods at low prices and capitalized on the unwillingness of large distributors to service small shops. He added the Restaurant Depot concept in 1994.
There are more than 130 Restaurant Depots and 10 Jetro locations across the United States, according to the company's website in March 2018. He sold 27 percent of the company in 2004 to two private equity firms, New York-based CCMP Capital Advisors and Los Angeles-based Leonard Green & Partners. He gave 10 percent of the company to executives and employees. In 2012, he issued a $1 billion private placement of debt, in part to pay a one-time shareholder dividend, and borrowed another $1.4 billion a year later to buy back about half of the interest held by the private equity partners, according to an industry source familiar with the transactions who asked not to be identified because the information is private. CCMP spokeswoman Allison Cole declined to comment. Representatives for Leonard Green didn't respond to requests for comment.
Kirsh has also accumulated a collection of real estate assets to help hedge against inflation.