Amancio Ortega is a global billionaire whose personality cannot be ignored. The Spanish billionaire is not only the richest man in his own country, but also the richest man in Europe. Any lover of fashion chains like Zara clothing and accessories would also love the success story of the world’s richest retailer. This is how the fashion entrepreneur and founder/chairman of the Inditex fashion group, known to be a reclusive multi-billionaire, went from rags to riches.
biography
Amancio Ortega Gaona was born on March 28, 1936 in Busdongo de Arbás, Leon in Spain. He is the youngest child of four children born to mother Josefa Gaona Hernández and father Antonio Ortega Rodríguez. His family, which depended on his father’s salary as a local railroad worker and his mother’s meager income as a housemaid, lived in a very poor state. Due to his parents’ inability to afford life’s basic necessities on their meager salaries, Ortega dropped out of school and began working at age 14. First he worked as a salesman at a local clothing company, “Gala”. Working as a messenger boy at the company was a formative experience for the future billionaire, as it was there that he learned how to make clothes with his hands.
Career and success journey
In the 1950s, Ortega organized sewing for women’s cooperatives in Galicia, Spain, Galicia to produce lingerie, baby clothes and nightgowns. After ten years managing the sewing co-operatives, Ortega founded his first company in the market, naming it Confecciones GOA, SA in 1963. The company at the time was selling quilted bathrobes.
Ortega is popularly known for his clothing and accessories line Zara, which he founded in 1975 with his first wife Rosalia in La Coruña. Zara is just a part of Ortega’s Inditex group, in which he owns no less than 59.29% of the shares. Ortega’s retail group includes other luxury fashion chains such as Tempe, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Kiddy’s Class, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho and Uterqüe. With more than 6000 stores, Ortega employs over 92,000 people. In June 2011, Amancio Ortega retired from Inditex at the age of 75 and was replaced by Inditex Vice President and CEO Pablo Isla. However, Amancio continues to play an important role in the business. He remains the main muse and inspiration for the entire company.
Amancio Ortega has several holdings in other sectors such as tourism, finance and many gas companies. He again has real estate investments in Paris, Lisbon, London and Madrid and owns the tallest building in Spain, the Torre Picasso in Madrid. The skyscraper is 515 feet tall and is valued at $535 million. He also owns a luxury condo in Miami, Florida called The Epic Residences & Hotel. Ortega currently has the largest net worth in Europe as one of the world’s richest and most influential men with an estimated net worth of $80 billion.
Despite his enormous wealth, Amancio Ortega is activethe list of global billionaires who prefer to behave conservatively and live a modest lifestyle. He is well known for being discreet in public and spends millions of dollars to protect his privacy. In fact, no photo of Ortega was published until 1999. For decades, his lifestyle was a mystery to the public, with neither the Spanish business leader nor his relatives granting public interviews. To show how strict he is about his privacy, the self-made mogul has only given three interviews in his life and they were only for journalists in Spain. He is usually dressed very simply in a blue blazer, white shirt, gray trousers and no tie. Amazingly, his outfits aren’t even from his Zara brand. He drinks coffee from the same place every day and eats alongside the people who work for him at the company cafe.
Amancio Ortega is a dedicated philanthropist who invests in charitable causes. He owns a philanthropic foundation The Paideia Foundation which he started in 1986 with his first wife. The foundation helps to educate and educate people with mental and physical disabilities. The Fundacion Amancio Ortega is another non-profit organization of Amancio. The NGO aims to promote science, research, education, social action, culture and welfare.
Amancio Ortega family: wife, daughters, son
Amancio Ortega married his first wife, Rosalía Mera, in 1966 and the couple have two children together, a daughter, Sandra Ortega Mera, and a son, Marcos Ortega Mera. However, they divorced in 1986.
Many years later, in 2001, Ortega married FloraPerez Marcote. Flora, who is 18 years younger than her billionaire formerly at Ortega, and currently holds a board position at Inditex. Ortega’s second marriage produced a daughter, Marta Ortega, who is said to be the business mogul’s heiress. Marta is very close to her father and shares professional similarities with him.