Magazine includes six Vancouver residents in the $2-billion club

Canadian Business magazine's annual rich list features six Vancouverites worth more than $2 billion each. But we should take these numbers about our billionaire boys' club with a sufficient degree of skepticism.

Jim Pattison, the head of the Jim Pattison Group, ranked fourth overall at $7.88 billion. How some magazine editors are able to determine the net worth of a guy who heads a private company eludes me.

The Aquilini family, who made a lot of money in real estate, was in 25th place at $2.8 billion. Again, I suspect there's some guessing involved there, though a messy divorce offered reporters some insight into the family's assets.

The super-secretive Lalji family, which owns the Park Royal Shopping Centre, came in third at $2.69 billion. Perhaps the magazine added up the assessed value of all of the family's real-estate holdings, but how can that necessarily equal the entire net worth? 

Unless Canadian Business has a pipeline into the Canada Revenue Agency, there's no real way of knowing.

Next is Bob Gaglardi, whose private Northland Properties Group owns local Denny's restaurants and many other food and real-estate assets, as well as the Dallas Stars. He's pegged at $2.58 billion.

Fifth is London Drugs supremo Brandt Louie, who heads a private company that has not been terribly forthcoming about how much profit it's making. And why would it when it's competing against the Westons, Pattison, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart?

Sixth is lululemon athletica founder Chip Wilson at $2.1 billion. This is the only figure on the list I would trust because Wilson's wealth can be measured in the value of his shareholdings.