Investing in logistics centers and luxury residential buildings in the US
The founder and former chairman of the fashion group Inditex has a net worth of €69.4 billion.
In 2022, Spanish tycoon Amancio Ortega, the man behind the enormous success of the Zara clothing chain, made his debut in the residential rental market, acquiring a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan, New York's most elite neighborhood.
Yesterday it became known that the real estate of “Mr Zara” is the largest among the European “crois”. The value of his real estate rose 19% in 2022 to 18.1 billion euros in 2022 from 15.3 billion euros in 2021, as Spain's richest man invested in logistics centers and luxury buildings in the US, he announced the company Pontegadea, which manages his property. The Inditex founder shelled out about $1 billion to buy U.S. warehouses last year, his first foray into the logistics industry after decades of focusing mostly on commercial real estate. Pontegadea has to spend around €2 billion a year that it receives in dividends from Ortega's 59% stake in Inditex, which owns Zara and Bershka, among others. Due to its legal and tax structure, it is required to invest all of its income from Inditex within a year in investments in the “real economy”, meaning it cannot buy bonds and other securities.
Amancio Ortega it also owns stakes in energy and telecommunications companies and renewable energy producers.
In 2022 it had revenues of €2.5 billion, with the dividend from Inditex amounting to €1.7 billion and income from real estate transactions up 21% to €782 million. Last year, Ortega bought two apartment complexes, a 64-story skyscraper in Seattle and an apartment building on Dutch Street in New York. This year, it agreed to pay €115 million for its first European warehouse in Venlo, Netherlands, while it bought a manufacturing facility east of Los Angeles that is used by Walmart.
The recent acquisitions mark the growing diversification of a portfolio that has historically focused on office buildings and retail landmarks, including Meta's Seattle headquarters and Manhattan's historic Haughwout Building.
Mr Zara also owns stakes in energy and telecommunications companies and renewable energy producers, such as 12% in the Portuguese electricity and gas company REN (Redes Energeticas Nacionais) and 5% in the Spanish electricity transmission company Red Electrica Corp. Ortega has a net worth of €69.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The founder and former chairman of the fashion group Inditex is the third richest person in Europe after Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury company, and François Bettencourt, heir to the French multinational cosmetics and care company L'Oréal. In 2015 he was briefly the richest man in the world, surpassing Bill Gates, as his net worth hit €73 billion as Inditex's revenues soared.
