German entrepreneur Rainer Schaller’s estimated net worth was approximately $246 million.
The founder and CEO of the RSG Group, Schaller completed his training as a retail salesman in Schlüsselfeld. He supplemented this with further training to become a business and retail specialist.
At the age of 22, he took over his first Edeka supermarket, and shortly afterward three more in his home region.
In 1997, Schaller switched to the fitness industry and opened his first studio under the McFit brand in Würzburg, Germany. The RSG Group operates 21 global gym chains and lifestyle brands including Gold’s Gym, McFit and John Reed.
In 2020, Schaller acquired Gold’s Gym, which was in bankruptcy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organization operates in 48 countries and has 41,000 employees, either directly or through franchises.
Schaller made international headlines in 2010 as an organizer of the Berlin Love Parade techno festival after a crowd crush killed 21 people and injured 652 others at the event. Schaller testified as a witness in the court proceedings on the accident in 2018, accepted moral responsibility, but was not charged.
On October 21, 2022, a Piaggio P.180 Avanti plane carrying Schaller, his partner Christine Schikorsky, and their children disappeared en route from Palenque, Mexico to Limón, Costa Rica. The following day, Costa Rican authorities reported wreckage had been found 28-33 km (about 17-20 mi) from Limón, but has not confirmed the fate of the plane or its passengers.