The Wyss clan became billionaires in 2012 when patriarch Hansjoerg Wyss, a Swiss immigrant, sold his medical device manufacturer, Synthes, to Johnson & Johnson for $20.2 billion.
Wyss still has interests in several biotech companies, but he’s dedicating his later years to philanthropic efforts.
His charitable foundations have assets valued at more than $2 billion, and in a 2018 op-ed in The New York Times, he pledged to donate $1 billion over the next decade to conservation causes.
