How Much Money Does Bruce Wayne Make In A Day

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Jul 17, 2012, 03:42pm EDT |

Calculating Bruce Wayne's Worth and the Cost to Become Batman

I write about technology and gadgets.

This article is more than 9 years old.

After calculating the cost of the Batmobile (in case you were wondering, it's an estimated $214,700), the econ students (and Batman fans) at Lehigh University have crunched a few more numbers to find the answers to two pressing questions: How much does it cost to be Batman and how much is Bruce Wayne worth?

First off: How much does it cost to be Batman?

With an elite personal martial arts instructor costing about $60 an hour and Batman training for an estimated four hours a day, six days a week, training costs come to $74,880. To charter a private jet for his return to Gotham City, that comes to $20,150, or $1,550 an hour for the 13 hours between Beijing and New York. When it comes to equipment, the total comes to about $147,000. Butler Alfred likely charges $30 an hour. If he works every hour every day, that's a yearly salary of $262,800. A couple other miscellaneous costs, and Centives came up with this estimate:

The total bill? $2.8 million to show the criminal scum that the city doesn't belong to them. However, if you decide that you're willing to take the risk and order just one graphite helmet rather than 10,000, you can strike terror in the hearts of criminals for just $806,386.19.

Now on to Bruce Wayne's worth.

While Forbes had valued the fictional character's worth at $6.9 billion, its methodology wasn't made public, so the students behind the Centives blog decided to run its own numbers, based on the two Christopher Nolan movies: "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight."

Looking at the family business, the students compared Wayne Enterprises' construction division to real-world Turner Construction, which nets about $39 million. Because Wayne Enterprises moves into defense, they also looked to L-3 Communications, which had a net income of $956 million in 2011. The shipping division is compared with Horizon Lines, which lost $229 million in 2011, and the troubled securities division was compared with Bear Stearns, which saw an annualized net income of $684 million.

Therefore, based on the information in the film, Wayne Enterprises has an approximate net income of $1.45 billion. The largest component of this is the defense division which fits well with the movie since we are told that this sector of the company has become its "cornerstone" and it explains why Bruce Wayne has the latest in military technology to help fight crime in Gotham.

But what about Wayne himself?

At the end of Batman Begins Wayne Enterprises goes public. General Electric is another public company with a significant defense sector, and a long history, founded in New York. Its shares trade at around 16 times its earnings. If Wayne Enterprises trades at a similar ratio then it has a net worth of $23.22 billion. This would make Wayne Enterprises the 121st largest firm in the world by market capitalization. And how much of this is Bruce Wayne worth? We know that he holds the company dear and at the end of Batman Begins purchases a controlling stake. Assuming that this is 50% of the firm, this makes him worth $11.6 billion. This would make the Bruce Wayne depicted in the Batman films the 73rd richest person in the real world, and the fourth richest person in the fictional world, putting him ahead of Iron Man.

Who to believe? Forbes' Fictional 15 or Centives? Either way, being Wayne is expensive. Good thing he's loaded.

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