Last week, during a meeting in my Park Avenue office, I glanced at my favorite wall decoration, a framed tie imprinted with “Capitalist Tool,” the motto of Forbes that Steve Forbes was kind enough to send me after we jointly presented to a New York real estate crowd in 1988.

Since that day in '88, I have enjoyed the tie, and relished the biweekly delivery of Forbes magazine. Alas, I learned this weekend that the Capitalist Tool, Forbes Media made a deal to sell a controlling interest to a Hong Kong investor group for $300 million.

My sadness to see the Forbes family depart from control of Forbes was more sentimental than practical. Our economies are global, and Forbes'list of the richest people on earth is increasingly global.