Inditex shares dropped 6% on the news, wiping more than $3 billion from founder Amancio Ortega’s fortune. The Arteixo, Spain-based company is parent of Zara and seven other retail brands, operates more than 7,400 stores and had revenue of 32.6 billion euros ($34.1 billion) in the year to Jan. 31, 2023. Today, his retail company Inditex SA which owns eight brands including Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear has more than 7,500 stores around the world. Ortega, who dropped out of school at the age of 13, founded the company that grew into the retail giant Inditex as a workshop in his home in Spain in 1963. When he made the leap from production to retail with the launch of the first Zara store in 1975, the concept of getting garments from the idea stage to the sales floor within two weeks was so successful that it shook up the retail fashion industry.
High Street fashion giant Inditex, which owns brands including Zara and Massimo Dutti, has appointed the founder's daughter as its new chairwoman. Ortega, 84, the founder and owner of fashion label Zara, invested 2.1 billion euros in real estate last year through various subsidiaries of his holding company Pontegadea, according to an emailed statement. Pontegadea, which owns 59.3% of Zara parent Inditex SA, had a net income of 1.8 billion euros for 2019, including 1.64 billion euros in Inditex dividends and 621 million euros from real estate assets. It's all thanks to the popularity of his Zara fashion brand, which produces decently-made fashions, based on the latest looks from the runway, sold at affordable prices.
- You might not immediately recognize Ortega’s name, but chances are you’ve visited one of his stores.
- As of April 12, 2022, Ortega had a net worth of $46.9 billion, which made him the 25th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
- In 2021, over half of the factories were still located fairly close to corporate headquarters, either in Spain or Portugal, Turkey, or Morocco.
- She is the one who became the chairwoman after Amancio Ortega retired in 2011.
Market Realist specializes in must-know news highlights, in-depth analysis, and overviews of companies as well as industries. "They've got two people there who have relevant and long experience of the company - Carlos Crespo and Oscar Maceiras," she told the BBC. Ortega is very private about his personal life, and as of 2012 he has only given three interviews to journalists.
France's Liliane Bettencourt, who got much of her wealth from cosmetics company L'Oreal SA, was next among women at $34.5 billion, and ranked 11th overall. He wears the same thing to work every day and dines in the company cafeteria. In 2001, Ortega founded the Amancio Ortega Foundation, a charitable organization focused owner of zara net worth on education and social welfare. A person familiar with Ortega's fortune, who asked not to be identified because his finances are private, said that Bloomberg's net worth calculation was in line with the billionaire's holdings. The essential daily round-up of fashion news, analysis, and breaking news alerts.
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From that point on, the Zara brand launched Ortega on a trajectory that would make him the most successful fashion retailer in the world. New Zara stores opened across Spain in the 1980s, followed by the incorporation of Inditex in 1985, and a series of international store openings, brand expansions, and acquisitions throughout the 1990s. The billionaire founder behind Zara has tapped his youngest daughter to chair the fast fashion giant, in a surprise move that brings the world’s biggest clothing retailer back under the family’s control. At the turn of the 21st century, as Ortega approached retirement, he decided that taking his family-owned business to the public market was the best path forward. Within four decades, Ortega had grown Inditex from a small family workshop making women’s clothing into one of the largest fashion retailers in the world. He was the richest person in the world overtaking Bill Gates in 2015 when the Inditex stock peaked.
The Spanish billionaire’s property holdings have soared to 15.2 billion euros ($17.2 billion), his firm revealed Tuesday for the first time, giving him the largest real estate portfolio among Europe’s super-rich. Since becoming fabulously wealth, he's also become something of a real estate tycoon, with a portfolio worth at least an estimated $4 billion. He owns buildings in Madrid, London, Chicago, San Francisco and New York, including the iconic Torre Picasso, a 43-story skyscraper in Madrid (Google is a tenant), which he purchased from fellow billionaire Esther Koplowitz in 2011. In the early 1960s, Ortega developed the business model that would later be called fast fashion—and when the first Zara boutique opened in 1975, it revolutionized the retail fashion industry. Rather than cutting costs by outsourcing to China and waiting months for delivery like their competitors, Inditex drives profit by selling at full price and rarely getting stuck with unwanted stock. By the early 1960s, Ortega had already developed the core operating principles for the business model that would later be called fast fashion.
What Is Ortega’s Net Worth?
Born in 1936 to a railroad worker and housewife in northwestern Spain, Ortega started working in a clothing shop in the city of La Coruna at age 13. In 1963, he started making women's bathrobes with his siblings and soon-to-be-wife Rosalia Mera, who stitched some of the first items by hand in their home. A liability is included to reflect asset https://1investing.in/ purchases and an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance. In July 2020, El Grupo Pontegadea said it is the parent of Ortega's assets and has absorbed companies including Pontegadea? Our newsletters may include 3rd-party advertising, by subscribing you agree to the Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy.
Acquisitions include landmark properties like Manhattan’s historic Haughwout Building and Miami’s tallest office tower. Last year, his investment firm completed a $72.5 million deal for a downtown Chicago hotel, which followed purchases of a building in Washington’s central business district and two Seattle office buildings. A record 1,645 billionaires with a total net worth of $6.4 trillion made Forbes' list, up from 1,426 last year. With a net worth of $76 billion, the Microsoft Corp co-founder reclaimed the top spot after a four-year hiatus, toppling Mexico's telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim Helu, who placed second at $72 billion, Forbes said in announcing the list on Monday. Landmark properties in Ortega’s portfolio range from huge commercial complexes to historic buildings, including the tallest skyscraper in Spain (the Torre Picasso in Madrid), the historic E.V. Haughwout Building in Manhattan, an entire block of prime property in Miami Beach, and an office block in London's Mayfair neighborhood.
In his pick, Ortega passed over two older children he had with his first wife, neither of whom are involved with the business. His daughter Sandra Ortega Mera, 53, is a major shareholder, inheriting a 4.5% stake after her mother and company cofounder, Rosalia Mera, died suddenly in 2013. That makes her the second-richest person in Spain, with a net worth of $6.9 billion. Mera, a trained psychologist, lives in the same coastal Spanish town of La Coruña where she grew up and where the company is headquartered with her husband and three kids.
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Until 1999, no photograph of Ortega had ever been published—and he has granted interviews to only three journalists throughout his entire career. The most famous Zara fan is likely Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, but Zara has a long list of celebrity admirers, including Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, and Olivia Palermo. In 1949, at the age of 13, Ortega went to work as an assistant to a luxury shirtmaker in his hometown of La Coruña, where he learned to make clothes by hand. Over the next 14 years, as he was promoted to Assistant Manager and Shop Manager, he had direct experience not only dealing with customers but also purchasing fabrics and other supplies to manufacture apparel. Amancio Ortega Gaona was born in a small village in northern Spain in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and moved with his family to Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain, in 1949. His father was an itinerant railway worker, his mother worked as a maid, and the family lived in a row house on the railroad tracks.
He leads a quiet life in La Coruña, a seaside town near Inditex's headquarters in Arteixo. The son of a railway worker, he founded Inditex with former wife Rosalia Mera, also a billionaire, making lingerie and dressing gowns in their living room. Inditex’s low advertising spending has also allowed the company to avoid outsourcing production to third-party producers.
Once a tiny dress shop in Spain, Inditex is now one of the largest fashion empires worldwide, with more than 6,900 stores globally. The retailer’s portfolio of brands includes Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, and most notably, fast-fashion giant Zara. Today, the retailer has 1,500 stores in 70 countries around the world and is changing retail forever. Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish fashion entrepreneur and founder of Zara's parent company Inditex. He has been living his life peacefully as one of the richest people on the planet. While he is not the richest person in the world, he is one of the richest individuals alive with a net worth of $70 billion.
One of its most influential but not official endorsers is Kate Middleton who was seen wearing Zara on some occasions. According to Business Insider, he temporarily unseated Bill Gates as the richest person in the world in 2015. Due to the variations of his business, the Zara founder typically earns $400 million in dividends per year. Despite losing $351 million and counting, due to the crisis, Ortega remains ahead of India’s Mukesh Ambani and Google’s Larry Page in the money rankings. Ortega managed to leverage the success of Zara and invested in other businesses. He has several properties that can be found in Madrid, London, Miami Beach, New York City, Chicago, and Seattle.
But he rarely jets off on vacation. He says he loves working too much to take time off.
Fast fashion—the massively successful business model that Ortega had first developed in the 1960s—was off and running. According to the only authorized biography of Ortega, his lifelong drive for success was triggered by a traumatic incident that happened shortly after the family arrived in their new town. One evening, as he was walking home with his mother, he witnessed her pleading for credit to buy groceries and coming out of the store empty-handed because the store owner refused to extend her line.
