Amancio Ortega is a Spanish businessman, Inditex owner, and has a fortune valued in 66,400 million dollars, which makes him stand on third position on the scale of the richest persons in the world.
Amancio Ortega is not only well economically positioned, but was also named the richest person in Europe. In order to understand the magnitude of his fortune, he could give a total of $9.2 dollars to each person on Earth with his total 66,400 million dollars. But since he is not going to do that, he decided to include in his fortune a Bombardier (private jet) valued in 40 million euros, and a 31 m. wide yacht valued in 6 million euros, which is actually a ridiculous amount when compared to his total fortune.
Amancio Ortega was born on March 28th, 1936 in Busdongo (Spain). He lived in Leon and Guipúzcoa (Spain) until he finally moved to Galicia. In 1963 he founded “Confecciones GOA S.A.”. As a curiosity, the name GOA comes from his own initials but in inverted order. Confecciones GOA S.A. was a business dedicated to manufacture smocks. Due to its growth and its vision of not only selling to national distributors, he started exporting to different European countries. Eventually, in 1975, he created ZARA, business that focused on clothes for men, women, and children. This same business turned into Inditex in 1985.
In 1988 started his expansion overseas with the inauguration of his first shop outside Spain, in Oporto (Portugal). Nonetheless, at that time, his business already exported clothes to many countries in Europe, America, Asia, Middle East and North of Africa. Thanks to this tremendous growth and impressive results, he also created the brands Pull & Bear, Bershka and Oysho. In 1995 he bought Massimo Dutti and in 1999 he bought Stradivarius in order to complete his empire and become the first world textile group, all under the name of Inditex, which went into the stock market in 2001. Finally, in 2011, he left the management aside but still remains as the maximum shareholder with 60% of their assets.
Amancio Ortega, besides being an entrepreneur in the textile sector, also dedicates time and money to the financial sector and investment funds. He owns big and well-known buildings such as Torre Picasso in Madrid, the Devonshire House office building in London (which he bought for 480 million euros), or the Apple shops in Barcelona and Valencia, which he bought for 86 and 23 million dollars respectively.
Following the path and actions of the other richest persons of the world, he also has a private Foundation, which he created in 2011. The Amancio Ortega Foundation is aimed to support all types of researches and education regarding science. His most important donation was giving 20 million euros to charity (Cáritas) in 2012, the most generous donation ever received by that famous foundation.
It is important to highlight that Amancio Ortega is starting his way up on the Forbes list regarding richest persons of the world, achieving to take Warren Buffet’s 3rd place in 2012. If progressions and figures keep going on the same path, his fortune could be higher than Carlos Slim soon, since in 2014 Ortega registered an increase of 19,500 million dollars, the highest increase in the history of this richest persons list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amancio_Ortega_Gaona
http://www.forbes.com/profile/amancio-ortega/
http://fortune.com/2013/01/08/meet-amancio-ortega-the-third-richest-man-in-the-world/
