Background and career
Mario Joseph Gabelli (born June 19, 1942) is an American stock investor, investment advisor, and financial analyst. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Gabelli Asset Management Company Investors (Gamco Investors), an investment firm headquartered in Rye, New York. Forbes magazine listed him as #1725 in December 2023 on its list of billionaires, with a net worth of $1.7 billion US. In January 2000, Gabelli was included on the Barron's All Century Team, their list of the most influential mutual fund industry portfolio managers. He was named an honorary member of Local 6 and the Hotel Trades Council in December 2019, and was formally inducted into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans in April 2020.
Gabelli, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in The Bronx and went to Fordham Preparatory School, where he graduated in 1961. He has said he read market reports for fun when he was very young and that he bought his first stock when he was 13 years old. Gabelli won a scholarship and graduated from Fordham University summa cum laude in 1965. He received his Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia Business School. At Columbia, he was taught by Roger Murray, noted value investing professor and co-author of the Fifth Edition of Security Analysis, The Graham & Dodd Value Investing Bible. Gabelli and his firm later launched the Graham & Dodd, Murray, Greenwald Award for Distinguished Value Investors. This award is presented yearly at his annual client symposium.
After graduation, Gabelli accepted a position at Loeb, Rhoades & Co. as a security analyst responsible for coverage of farm equipment, auto parts conglomerates and later media and broadcasting. He put into practice the theory of value investing he had learned at Columbia. He rated companies not by earnings but cash flow, analyzing a firm in great detail to calculate what he called private-market value: not the share price at which a stock was selling on an exchange, but the price per share someone would be willing to pay in order to buy the whole company.
In 1976, Gabelli formed Gabelli & Co., an institutional brokerage house, with borrowed funds and money he had accumulated trading his own account. Soon after, he formed Gabelli Investors (later Gamco Investors) to manage money for clients.
Gabelli's first investment vehicle for the general public, the Gabelli Asset Fund, launched in March 1986 as a no-load fund requiring a minimum of $25,000 to invest. Today, this fund is available for a minimum investment of $1,000 and accepts IRA investments without a minimum. The Asset Fund was followed by the Gabelli Equity Trust, a closed-end fund, which, at the time, was the largest equity offering on the NYSE. By the end of 1988, Gabelli's firm had three mutual funds—two run by himself—with combined assets of $650 million. By 1998, Gabelli Asset Management Inc. was managing $16.3 billion. In February 1999, the company went public, selling 6 million shares, or about twenty percent of the common stock, at $17.50 per share. In 1997, when ten Gabelli equity funds averaged a return of 31.7 percent, the best of any U.S. mutual fund group, Gabelli was honored by Morningstar, Inc. as the domestic equity fund manager of the year. The Institutional Investor chose Gabelli as 2010 Money Manager of the Year for its second annual U.S. Investment Management Awards. The selection was based on performance as well as a survey by U.S. institutions.
Signators of The Giving Pledge, Gabelli and his wife Regina joined the cause in 2017, which is a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to giving back. According to Forbes magazine, Gabelli's net worth was $1.4 billion as of April 2020.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
