Business
Walton family fortune: How America’s richest family manages their wealth
Rob Walton, left, Walmart retired chairman of the board, and Walmart board member Steuart Walton listen at the Walmart annual formal business and shareholders meeting in Rogers, Arkansas, on May 30, 2018. Walmart shareholders from around the world can attend meetings throughout the week.
Rick T. Wilking | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Walmart stock has soared 25% this year, putting America’s largest retailer on track to a $1 trillion market cap. At the center of the stock windfall is the Walton family, worth $482 billion by Bloomberg’s estimate, and their personal investment firms.
None of the Waltons — the surviving children and grandchildren of late Walmart founder Sam Walton — work directly for the retailer, though one serves on Walmart’s board and an in-law chairs it. But the family still holds a 45% stake in Walmart, and since the start of 2020, the Waltons and their family trust have sold $25.3 billion in Walmart stock, according to Smart Insider.
As America’s richest family has gotten richer, the Waltons have put their growing wealth in the hands of a network of family offices to make investments and launch foundations.
Walton Enterprises, the family office that holds most of their Walmart shares, acts as the central hub for the family’s investments and philanthropy. The rest is held in a family trust that is managed by Walton Enterprises. The firm declined to comment for this story.
Walton Enterprises flies under the radar. Few of its investments are disclosed, but public records reveal real estate developments and a $4.4 billion stock portfolio with a conservative mix of ETFs and bond funds.
Buzzy bets on sports teams, artificial intelligence startups and clean energy are left to the family members and their individual family offices. For instance, Rob Walton, son of founder Sam, bought the NFL’s Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion in 2022 and is worth $137 billion per Bloomberg. Part of his wealth is managed by private equity firm Madrone Capital Partners, which is the largest shareholder of ticket reseller StubHub. His nephew Lukas Walton, worth $48 billion, has made $15 billion in impact investments over the last decade or so, ranging from sustainable fuel made from sewage to bonds that fund ocean conservation, according to his family office Builders Vision.
Yet even as they build out their own teams and infrastructure, the Waltons continue to rely on Walton Enterprises for much of their wealth management and philanthropy needs.
Experts say this “hub and spoke” model allows the family to benefit from the economies of scale created by their pooled investments, while also enabling family members to pursue their own projects.
The family is able to access top-tier private equity and venture capital funds more easily than they would with individual smaller allocations, according to an advisor familiar with the firm’s operations.
“It’s amazing what a billion dollars won’t buy you,” said the advisor, who spoke anonymously due to restrictions from their employer.
It’s a model more ultra wealthy families are adopting as they seek to leverage their wealth and access to top investment opportunities, while also accommodating the different priorities of the next generation.
Scott Saslow, a family office consultant and principal, said he sees more families using this strategy and employs it himself. He shares the costs of some services like accounting with siblings but manages his own sustainability investments.
“I think it works best, honestly, when everyone is open about when it makes sense to use central resources and when it doesn’t,” Saslow said. “Families are increasingly finding ways to draw the next gen in and not be too paternalistic.”
Gregg Lemkau, co-CEO of bank and investment advisory firm BDT & MSD Partners, said 39-year-old Lukas Walton, in particular, is part of a growing cohort of next-generation heirs who are forging a path outside the family business.
“Lukas Walton has really poured his passion into impact,” Lemkau told CNBC. “And with Builders Vision, which has massive scale and impact on oceans and the planet and agriculture, [Lukas] is really having a differentiated impact on something that was passionate to him.”
Similarly, Lukas Walton’s cousins, Tom Walton and Steuart Walton, through their firm RZC Investments, have backed a new mountain biking park near the family’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas (also home to Walmart’s headquarters). Cousin Ben Walton and his wife, Lucy Ana, use Zoma Capital to support water scarcity and economic development initiatives in Colorado and Chile.
Lukas Walton’s mother, Christy, invests in conservation efforts through her family office, Innovaciones Alumbra. Also known as iAlumbra, the family office oversees an impact fund that supports ocean health, a charitable foundation and eco-friendly ranches. Christy, the widow of Sam’s son John, is worth an estimated $22.4 billion, according to Bloomberg.
In some ways, Walton Enterprises is more similar to a multifamily office that happens to service members of one family than a traditional single-family office. Sharing a family office allows the Waltons to distribute the costs of services like tax accounting and property management while using their personal firms to service their individual needs.
It’s a model pioneered by the Rockefellers. Since Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller established his family office in the 1880s, his descendants started their own firms for investing and philanthropy like Venrock and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
That said, it comes with many challenges, especially as families move from the second generation to the third, according to family-office consultant Dennis Jaffe of BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors. While second-generation family members grew up in the same household and likely share similar values, the third generation can be more distant and disparate in their interests.
“To keep the family together from the third generation on, you have to invest time, money and energy to make it happen. You have to want to do it,” said Jaffe, who has not worked with the Waltons. “I mean, sometimes these are difficult people and to add to all that, they marry people who sometimes can be even more difficult.”
A growing number of high-net-worth families are facing this challenge as wealth transfers from one generation to the next, Jaffe said. A family’s third generation may feel pressured to keep the family office structure intact but may want to make different investment choices, such as seeding AI startups and divesting from oil, he said.
Jaffe, who has studied 100-year-old families, said most families find compromises between letting the next generation take the reins and squashing their individuality. For example, rather than starting a new family office for a third-generation heir, which is costly, they may opt to create an investment fund for them to run, he said.
As for the Waltons, the next generation is slowly gaining more authority. The grandchildren were given voting rights over the family’s Walmart holdings a year ago. Some have also taken over the family foundation’s board, and the $8.6 billion philanthropy’s causes have shifted leftward.
“The next generation, when they have great amounts of wealth, are less concerned with how to make more wealth, and more concerned with the issue of, what do we do with it,” Jaffe said. “It’s not necessarily a political shift as it is a different level of looking at the world. You’re looking ahead. If you’re an elder, you’re looking at what you’ve done and celebrating yourself to a certain degree and feeling very satisfied, very confident.”
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Budget 2026: FM Nirmala Sitharaman gives a strong push to manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation, while proposing a simpler tax and customs system.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Union Budget 2026-27.
Budget 2026 Takeaways: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday presented the Union Budget 2026-27, giving a strong push to manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation, proposing a simpler tax and customs regime, and hailing the government’s modernisation drive as a “reforms express”.
The Budget 2026 is anchored around three ‘kartavyas’ — driving growth by enhancing productivity and competitiveness, building people’s capacity, and ensuring inclusive development under the vision of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas.
In her ninth consecutive Budget in Parliament, Sitharaman laid out a multi-pronged strategy to sustain growth amid global uncertainty, including expanding domestic electronics and semiconductor capabilities, de-risking infrastructure projects, skilling India’s youth for emerging technologies, and easing compliance for taxpayers and importers.
Here are the key takeaways from Budget 2026 across manufacturing, infrastructure, skills, AI, taxation and customs duty.
Manufacturing Gets A Boost
Budget 2026 put a special emphasis on the manufacturing landscape in India. The outlay for electronics components manufacturing was raised sharply to Rs 40,000 crore, while new schemes for rare earth magnets, chemical parks, container manufacturing and capital goods seek to reduce import dependency, and strengthen domestic supply chains. Textiles got an integrated, employment-oriented package covering fibres, clusters, skilling and sustainability.
Infrastructure-Led Growth
Infrastructure got a boost with a higher capex allocation and initiatives like a risk guarantee fund to de-risk projects for private developers, new dedicated freight corridors and national waterways, dedicated REITs (real estate investment trusts) for recycling of significant real estate assets of central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), and a seaplane VGF (viability gap funding) scheme.
The Centre’s capital expenditure (capex) target has been increased to Rs 12.2 lakh crore for FY27, up from Rs 11.2 lakh crore earmarked for the current financial year. Moreover, maintaining the fiscal discipline, Sitharaman said the government expects the fiscal deficit to be at 4.3 per cent of the GDP in 2026-27, lower than 4.4 per cent projected for the current financial year.
Tier-II and Tier-III cities were placed at the centre of urban growth via City Economic Regions, backed by reform-linked funding.
“We shall continue to focus on developing infrastructure in cities with over 5 lakh population (Tier II and Tier III), which have expanded to become growth centres,” Sitharaman said in her Budget Speech.
Greater Emphasis On Skilling
The Budget placed renewed emphasis on the services economy as a jobs engine. A high-powered Education-to-Employment and Enterprise Committee will realign skilling with market needs, including the impact of emerging technologies.
Content creation and creative industries get a boost through AVGC labs in schools and colleges, support for animation, gaming and comics, and new institutional capacity for design and hospitality. Tourism-linked skilling, from guides to digital heritage documentation, signals a clear intent to convert culture and content into employment and exports.
“I propose to support the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies, Mumbai in setting up AVGC Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges,” FM Sitharaman said. AVGC stands for animation, visual effects, gaming and comics.
AI & Semiconductors Push
Artificial intelligence (AI) was positioned as a cross-sector force multiplier rather than a standalone theme. The Budget provided a push to artificial intelligence (AI) by promoting adoption with governance, agriculture, education and skilling, including proposals for AI-enabled advisory tools for farmers and AI integration in education curricula.
On hardware, the semiconductor strategy expanded decisively under ISM 2.0 (India Semiconductor Mission 2.0), with focus on domestic equipment manufacturing, materials, research centres and workforce development, signalling a long-term commitment to building a resilient chip ecosystem in India.
Taxation, ITR, TDS, TCS
A major structural reform comes with the Income Tax Act, 2025, effective April 1, 2026, containing simpler rules and redesigned forms.
Budget 2026 provided compliance relief for individuals, including extended timelines for revising returns to March 31 from December 31 earlier, staggered ITR due dates, and easier filing of Form 15G/15H through depositories.
Individuals with ITR-1 and ITR-2 returns will continue to file till July 31, and non-audit business cases or trusts are proposed to be allowed time till August 31, according to the Budget Speech 2026-27.
“I propose to extend time available for revising returns from 31st December to up to 31st March with the payment of a nominal fee. I also propose to stagger the timeline for filing of tax returns. Individuals with ITR 1 and ITR 2 returns will continue to file till 31st July and non-audit business cases or trusts are proposed to be allowed time till 31st August,” Sitharaman said.
TDS (Tax deducted at source) rules were clarified for manpower services, while a rule-based system for lower or nil TDS certificates is proposed. TCS rates were cut to 2% for overseas tour packages, education and medical expenses under liberalised remittance scheme (LRS). Litigation is targeted through integrated assessment and penalty orders, lower pre-deposit requirements, and wider immunity provisions.
TDS on the sale of immovable property by a non-resident will be deducted and deposited through resident buyer’s PAN (Permanent Account Number)-based challan instead of requiring TAN (Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number), Sitharaman said.
Customs Duty Tweaks
Customs duty rationalisation continued with a clear focus on domestic manufacturing, energy transition and ease of living. Exemptions have been extended or introduced for capital goods used in lithium-ion batteries, critical minerals processing, nuclear power projects and aircraft manufacturing.
Personal imports will become cheaper with a reduction in duty on goods for personal use from 20% to 10%. Seventeen cancer drugs and additional rare-disease treatments were exempted from customs duty. Process reforms aimed at trust-based, tech-driven clearances, faster cargo movement and lower compliance costs, especially for exporters and MSMEs (micro, small, medium and enterprises).
STT On F&O Hiked
The Budget increased securities transaction tax (STT) on futures trading from 0.02% to 0.05% and on options trading from 0.10% to 0.15%, a move that upset the capital markets with the BSE Sensex crashing more than 2,300 points from the day’s high and the NSE Nifty dropping to 24,571.75.
Securities Transaction Tax (STT) is a direct tax imposed on the buying and selling of securities in India.
Commenting on the Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “The Union Budget reflects the aspirations of 140 crore Indians. It strengthens the reform journey and charts a clear roadmap for Viksit Bharat.”
February 01, 2026, 14:43 IST
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Piyush Goyal termed the Budget “economically and fundamentally very strong”, and stated that it “reflects the aspirations of the youth of the country”.
Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal. (File photo)
Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday termed Budget 2026 “futuristic and holistic”, and stated that it “reflects the aspirations of the youth of the country and is forward-looking”.
Speaking exclusively to CNN-News18 on Budget 2026, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Goyal said, “This is a fabulous budget and it is very futuristic. The Budget 2026 has covered all sectors including technology, infrastructure, etc.”
“The technology sector has been given a thrust. The budget focuses on infrastructure. It is a holistic and forward-looking budget refecting future ready Bharat,” he said, adding, “The budget meets the aspirations of the youth and new India.”
Stating that the Budget is economically and fundamentally very strong, the Union Minister said, “Farmers, animal husbandry and labour-intensive sectors get a major push as this Budget focuses on investment, value addition and jobs.”
#Exclusive | “The Budget is economically and fundamentally very strong,”Preparing India for Viksit Bharat. Farmers, animal husbandry and labour-intensive sectors get a major push as the Budget focuses on investment, value addition and jobs.@Parikshitl in an exclusive… pic.twitter.com/tJr2SItcaW
— News18 (@CNNnews18) February 1, 2026
‘Budget 2026 Is Human-Centric’: PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that the Union Budget 2026 is “human-centric and strengthens India’s foundation with path-breaking reforms.” The Prime Minister also described it as historic and a catalyst for accelerating the country’s reform trajectory and long-term growth.
Following the presentation of the Budget in Parliament, PM Modi said the proposals would energise the economy, empower citizens and give India’s youth fresh opportunities to scale new heights.
“This budget brings the dreams of the present to life and strengthens the foundation of India’s bright future. This budget is a strong foundation for our high-flying aspirations of a developed India by 2047,” he said.
Calling the government’s reform agenda a “Reform Express”, the Prime Minister added, “The reform express that India is riding today will gain new energy and new momentum from this budget.”
February 01, 2026, 19:01 IST
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Interest rates are widely expected to remain at 3.75% as Bank of England policymakers prioritise curbing above-target inflation while also monitoring economic growth, according to expert analysis.
The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is anticipated to leave borrowing costs unchanged when it announces its latest decision on Thursday, marking its first interest rate setting meeting of the year.
This follows a rate cut delivered before Christmas, which was the fourth such reduction.
At the time, Governor Andrew Bailey noted that the UK had “passed the recent peak in inflation and it has continued to fall”, enabling the MPC to ease borrowing costs. However, he cautioned that any further cuts would be a “closer call”.
Since that decision, official data has revealed that inflation unexpectedly rebounded in December, rising for the first time in five months.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation rate reached 3.4% for the month, an increase from 3.2% in November, with factors such as tobacco duties and airfares contributing to the upward pressure on prices.
Economists suggest this inflation uptick is likely to reinforce the MPC’s inclination to keep rates steady this month.
Philip Shaw, an analyst for Investec, stated: “The principal reason to hold off from easing again is that at 3.4% in December, inflation remains well above the 2% target.”
He added: “But with the stance of policy less restrictive than previously, there are greater risks that further easing is unwarranted.”
Shaw also highlighted other data points the MPC would consider, including gross domestic product (GDP), which saw a return to growth of 0.3% in November – a potentially encouraging sign for policymakers.
Matt Swannell, chief economic advisor to the EY ITEM Club, affirmed: “Keeping bank rate unchanged at 3.75% at next week’s meeting looks a near-certainty.”
He noted that while some MPC members who favoured a cut in December still have concerns about persistent wage growth and inflation, recent data has not been compelling enough to prompt back-to-back reductions.
Edward Allenby, senior economic advisor at Oxford Economics, forecasts the next rate cut to occur in April.
He explained: “The MPC will continue to face a delicate balancing act between supporting growth and preventing inflation from becoming entrenched, with forthcoming data on pay settlements likely to play a decisive role in shaping the next policy move.”
The Bank’s policymakers have consistently voiced concerns regarding the pace of wage increases in the UK, which can fuel overall inflation.
From Manufacturing To Infra And AI: Capex Boost Flags Off Budget 2026 ‘Reforms Express’
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