Richard Cohen, New Hampshire's Invisible Grocery Billionaire

There’s a reason Richard Cohen escapes attention. The chairman of C&S Wholesale Grocers works out of a nondescript office park in Keene, N.H., a mountain hamlet 90 miles northwest of Boston. Cohen’s last interview was published a decade ago. And the Keene Chamber of Commerce didn’t even bother to list C&S in a section of its website showcasing the area’s largest employers until a reporter flagged the omission. “We’re the biggest company no one has ever heard of,” says C&S spokesman Bryan Granger.

Cohen—who goes by Rick—has transformed C&S into the world’s largest grocery wholesaler since taking over the business in 1989. Along the way he’s amassed a fortune of $11.2 billion, making him one of the 100 richest people on the planet and the wealthiest man in New England after Connecticut hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. C&S had sales of $21.7 billion in 2012, supplying 4,000 supermarkets from Maine to Hawaii.