QUINCY – Granite Telecommunications owner and FoxRock Properties co-founder Robert Hale has a net worth of $5.4 billion, which makes him the world’s 553rd richest person, according to Forbes.

That is a places higher than his 568th rank last year.

Hale is the sixth richest person in Massachusetts and 203rd richest in the country.

Forbes has profiled him as one of America's 400 wealthiest people for three straight years. Hale increased his wealth by $400 million since last year, according to Forbes. Since 2022, his wealth has grown by a staggering $2.2 billion.

Prior to 2022, he did not appear on Forbes’ list of billionaires.    

A native of North Andover with homes in Hingham and Boston, Hale founded Granite Telecommunications in 2002 after his previous business, Network Plus, went bankrupt and laid off hundreds of employees, according to Forbes.  

In a May 2023 press release, the company said it surpassed its annual revenue goal of $1.85 billion thanks to $50 million in revenue growth over the preceding year. 

In January, Granite laid off 68 workers, 40 of whom worked out of the Quincy office on Newport Avenue Extension. A company representative said the job cuts were due to automation and a shift away from "plain old telephones" to more high-tech services.

Hale's FoxRock Properties has developed as Ashlar Park, Center and Stone and is working on a new medical center soon to get underway in the downtown. FoxRock owns over 5 million square feet of commercial property from Burlington to Norwell, according to its website.  

Hale has donated $270 million to charities, about 5% of his wealth, according to the Forbes profile, which gave him a philanthropy rating of 3 out of 10. Granite annually hosts the “Saving by Shaving” fundraising event for employees, which raises millions for Dana Farber each year.

While recent years have seen a great proliferation of billionaires in the United States and worldwide, average people have suffered under conditions of a global pandemic and historic inflation, which reached a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.

A 2024 Oxfam report said that since 2020, the world's top one percent have grown 43 percent richer, while 4.8 billion people have grown poorer as prices outpace wages.

The pandemic has been particularly good to American billionaires, whose collective wealth has grown from $2.947 trillion in March 2020 to $5.7 trillion in March 2024, according to Forbes surveys.

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