Spain’s Amancio Ortega now world’s richest man, says Forbes

The Zara tycoon is worth more than €70 billion, according to Forbes.

A couple of decades ago the boom in home PCs propelled Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the top of the world’s rich-list. From relative obscurity to one of the world’s most recognisable geeks, Gates eventually learned to revel in his role as world’s richest man, setting up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and giving a huge amount back to the society that made him.

Now it would seem that similarly publicity-shy clothing tycoon Amancio Ortega – who has long been Spain’s richest man – may have to call on Gates for some lessons in PR as it was revealed by Forbes that the Spaniard has become the richest individual on the planet…

The soaring value of his clothing empire Inditex – where shares reached an all-time high last week – have propelled Ortega’s net worth above the €70-billion mark for the first time ever, placing the Galician ahead of Gates and making him the richest man in the world.

The growth of Inditex’s high street brands – which include Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius and Oysho – has been extremely strong for the past five to six years. Clothing, fashion and homeware produced by these labels has been highly sought since the economic downturn: their fine balance of affordability and quality attracting custom from both the budget market and the higher end market, and Ortega has evidently reaped the benefits.

Zara’s ‘Fast Fashion’ model is the brainchild of Ortega, who has been known to greenlight designs within hours of analysing feedback from shop assistants trained to notice shoppers’ reactions to certain trends. According to one Inditex director, Ortega is more likely to listen to the advice of a Zara shop assistant than any of its managers.

It is this hands-on approach that many believe has made Inditex the world’s largest fashion retailer.

However, such are the fickle nature of shares and exchange rates that Bloomberg has yet to confirm that it too ranks Ortega as the world’s richest man, but Forbes’s ranking is the one everybody pays heed to.

Besides, Inditex is showing encouraging signs of growing from strength to strength, with Harvard Business Review recently ranking the company’s chairman, Pablo Isla, as the third-most successful executive in the world.

The company now boasts more than 6,700 stores across 88 countries, and has a staff of more than 140,000. Not bad going for a 75-year-old railway worker’s son from northern Spain who opened his first clothing store in A Coruña more than 50 years ago.