The Spanish founder of the Zara fashion chain has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man.
Amancio
Ortega’s personal fortune leapt by $1.7billion this week to
$79.5billion – taking the Inditex owner past the Microsoft co-founder’s
estimated $78.5billion.
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| AMANCIO AND DAUGHTER MARTA |
Already
Europe’s richest man, the 80-year-old – whose glamorous daughter Marta
is expected to take over management of the business – now tops the
global list.
Forbes reported that Ortega became the world’s richest man on Wednesday when Inditex shares went up 2.5 per cent.
He now has a larger net worth than US investor Warren Buffett and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
It is
not the first time Ortega has topped the list. He was briefly ahead of
Bill Gates in October before a surge in Microsoft shares put him back in
second place.
The son
of a railway worker from La Coruna in Spain, Ortega transformed
clothing group Inditex from a tiny family dressmaker into Spain’s
biggest company.
He has
turned Zara into a byword in chic for the money-conscious, transforming
the apparel business with its’fast fashion’ model.
Affordable
imitations of catwalk designscan move from drawing board to store
within two weeks, and poor sellers are pulled off the shop floor even
quicker.
Last year, his sales blossomed asInditex shares rose nearly 40 per cent.
He holds a 59.3 percent stake in what is now the world’sbiggest fashion retailer, ahead of Gap and Hennes & Mauritz.
It grew
from humble beginnings in the rainynorthern region of Galicia to more
than 6,000 stores in some 90countries with a stable of brands from
high-end label MassimoDutti to homewear chain Zara Home.
The
group is only the third Spanish firm ever to be valued above100 billion
euros, after bank Santander and telecomsgiant Telefonica, both of which
now lag well behind.
In a country recently emerged from a recession thatdestroyed businesses and jobs, Ortega is a rare self-made mogul.
The son
of a railway worker started his professional life at14 as a delivery
boy with a shirtmaker in the wind-sweptnorthern city of Coruna.
Within a few years he had set up aworkshop making nightgowns, lingerie and babywear, and the firstZara opened in Spain in 1975.
Ortega
never gives interviews and is rarely photographed. Hedid not even attend
the inaugural ringing of the stock marketbell at the Madrid exchange
when Inditex floated in 2001.
In
person, Ortega is a persuasive and enthusiastic businessman, who despite
progressively handing over the day-to-day management of the company
over the last decade continues as an active part of it, people familiar
with Inditex say.
He is known for selecting designs based on feedback fromshop assistants who zero in on shoppers’ reactions.
‘If he
speaks to a shop assistant and he likes what they hadto say, he will pay
more attention to that than to any of hismanagers,’ a former Inditex
director told Reuters.
Since
his ex-wife and Inditex co-founder Rosalia Mera diedsuddenly in August
2013, there has been intense speculation overthe succession.
His second wife Flora Perez, 61, sits on the board.
Ortega’s
majority stake in Inditex is held through another company, Pontegadea
Inversiones, which Ortega has also used to channel the steady flow of
dividends and build up a real estate portfolio with assets worth 8
billion euros at end-2014.
This,
as well as favourable inheritance laws in the Galicianregion, means that
his heirs are likely to keep a tight controlover the fashion empire.
In July it was reported that Ortega’s real estate assets in 2015 topped 6billion euros alone.
Using
massive dividend payouts from Inditex, which have nearly doubled over
the last five years, Ortega has made largely debt-free purchases of
prime buildings from London to New York, becoming a major commercial
real estate player over that period.
‘All
the buildings he buys are in prime districts. It’s a steady, reliable
income stream, almost like a sovereign bond,’ said Carles Vergara,
finance professor at IESE Business School.
Ortega’s
first big real estate purchase was Torre Picasso, an office building in
Madrid, bought in 2011 around the time he handed the daily running of
the world’s biggest clothing retailer to chief executive officer Pablo
Isla.
Since
then he has bought properties including an office block in London’s
Mayfair; a stretch of London’s prime shopping drag Oxford Street; and
the historic cast-iron clad E.V. Haughwout Building in SoHo, New York,
which housed a world- famous cut glass and porcelain store in the 19th
century and featured the world’s first passenger elevator.
Ortega
not only rents out his commercial property to Inditex stores like Zara
and upmarket label Massimo Dutti at market rates, but also to rivals
such as H&M of Sweden and Gap of the United States.
In
Madrid, he owns No. 32 on the Spanish capital’s main shopping drag Gran
Via. The Art Deco building, built as one of the city’s first grand-scale
department stores in the 1920s, now houses biggest store in Spain for
arch-rival Primark.
In February, Ortega made his first foray into Asia, buying a 22-storey plaza in Myeongdong, Seoul’s trendy shopping district.
Dailymail reportage.