According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Amancio Ortega is the 14th richest person in the world in 2023. He has run the fashion retail giant Inditex for four decades, but he is extremely private. Not a single photo of him was published until 1999.

A Zara employee who worked with him told The Economist in 2016 that “the true story of Amancio Ortega remains untold.” So what does the public know about the clothing retail tycoon, whose net worth is estimated at $75 billion?

Amancio Ortega (86) comes from humble origins. He was born in northwestern Spain in 1936, the son of a railway worker and a housewife. In his official autobiography, he recounts the anguish of seeing his mother leave a shop empty-handed at the age of 12 because she could no longer buy on credit.

His entrepreneurial spirit was ignited during those years. Ortega dropped out of school to work in a luxury men's shirt shop in A Coruña, taking his first steps in the textile industry that would later help him build his fortune.

After working as a laborer, with the help of his sister, brother, sister-in-law and future wife Rosalie Mera, Ortega set up his own tailoring workshop. In 1963, he opened his own store called Goa. In 1975, Ortega and Mera opened the first Zara store together in downtown La Coruña, Spain.

"Zara" was not actually his first choice for the store's name. He was going to call it Zorba, after the movie Zorba the Greek, but a local bar was already using that name. Since he had already purchased a stencil of the letters ZORBA, he decided to use those and eventually settled on "Zara."

Ten years later, in 1985, Ortega merged Zara into a holding company called Inditex. He and Mera separated around that time, but she remains the company’s second-largest shareholder. Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothing retailer. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands. The best known is still Zara, which has nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries.

Inditex also owns Pull&Bear, a youth-focused retailer with more than 970 stores in 76 markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America; and Bershka, the group's second-largest chain, accounting for 9% of total sales. Other brands under Inditex include Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Uterqüe and Zara Home.

At the close of trading last Friday, Inditex's market capitalization was 111.17 billion euros ($117.8 billion). So what is his formula for success? It is to work and constantly challenge the status quo. "I have always believed that to be successful, you have to turn the organization upside down every day," he explained.

To cut costs, Ortega was the first to understand the importance of logistics. In 1984, he revolutionized the process by building his first warehouse. He is not afraid to learn from his mistakes. “My university was business,” he says.

Since 2000, Inditex’s design team has been churning out 10,000 new designs a year. In 2017, they produced 700 million garments and had them on shelves in just five weeks, compared to nine months for other companies in the sector. Their speed allows them to respond quickly to customer demand and spend very little on marketing.

By 2011, at the age of 75, he had handed over the chairmanship of Inditex to his right-hand man Pablo Isla, when the group had 5,000 stores in 77 countries, employed 100,000 people and generated 12.5 billion euros in revenue. His retirement was a success as seven years later, Pablo Isla has maintained double-digit growth for Inditex.

From his native Galicia, where he lives, the businessman continues to oversee his empire. He sits down with Pablo Isla once a week to discuss the most important issues. However, billionaire Ortega has never hidden the fact that Pablo Isla is only a middleman.

His dream is to pass the empire on to his youngest daughter Marta, the result of his second marriage to Flora Pérez in 2001. His options for successors are limited. His eldest daughter Sandra Ortega Mera, the daughter of his ex-wife Mera, who died in August 2013, controls 5% of Inditex but does not participate in management, focusing instead on the family's charitable foundation. Meanwhile, his middle son Marcos is disabled.

So, since 2001, the youngest daughter, Marta, has been steadily rising in the product department - one of the most strategic departments. By 2022, Marta officially took over the chair of president. She was married to top Spanish equestrian Sergio Álvarez Moya in February 2012, but separated in 2015. In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta, a model manager and son of designer Roberto Torretta.

In addition to arranging a successor, billionaire Ortega has also been restructuring his assets since late 2017. At that time, he transferred his assets to investment company Pontegadea Inversiones, which controls 50.1% of Inditex. In total, Amancio Ortega owns 59.3% of Inditex shares because he also holds personal shares.

Pontegadea Inversiones also owns 100% of Pontegadea Inmobileiaria, a real estate investment company. According to Bloomberg , since Inditex's IPO in 2001, billionaire Ortega has received about $10 billion in dividends. Most of the money has been reinvested in real estate through Pontegadea Inversiones. So how much real estate does this billionaire own?

In 2011, he bought Torre Picasso - Spain's tallest building in Madrid, at 157 meters, for $536 million. In 2016, he spent $551 million to buy another skyscraper in Madrid, Cepsa Tower. That same year, he invested in Epic Residences & Hotel, a 54-story skyscraper in Miami (USA).

In 2015, he spent another $70 million to buy up all the prime real estate in Miami Beach. He is also said to have bought an office block in the Mayfair area and a property on Oxford Street, London.

In New York, he bought 490 Broadway on the corner of Broome Street for $145 million in the same year, and a year later, he snapped up another property there, a hotel at 70 Park Avenue in Murray Hill for $67.6 million.

In 2019, Ortega spent heavily on real estate, buying a downtown Chicago hotel for $72.5 million, a building in downtown Washington DC, and two office buildings in Seattle that Amazon leases for a combined $1.1 billion.

Ortega also owns a number of residential properties. He and his wife live in La Coruña, Spain, near a major Atlantic port. At one point, he also owned the Pazo de Dodro farm and estate near La Coruña. The estate was the site of his daughter Marta’s first wedding, but it’s unclear whether he still owns it.

Most recently in August, he bought a 45-story residential tower in Chicago for $232 million. The building has 492 apartments along with a fitness center, yoga studio, dog park and pet spa.

Outside of real estate investments, billionaire Ortega leads a private and modest life. In 2012, it was reported that Ortega drove an Audi A8 sedan. He also owns an $84 million superyacht called Drizzle, but is said to have put it up for sale in 2022. He rarely goes on vacation anyway.

In fact, Ortega didn't take his first vacation until 2001, after Inditex's IPO. It wasn't until 2001, on the occasion of the company's IPO, that Ortega agreed to have an official photo taken of him.

Bloomberg reported in 2012 that he eschewed his own office and instead sat with designers and fabric experts at Zara’s headquarters. He also ate lunch with employees in the company cafeteria.

Ortega wears a simple uniform of shirt and trousers and often does not wear his company's clothing. In his spare time, he can often be seen attending equestrian events. He also built an equestrian center near La Coruña, where his daughter Marta competes in show jumping.

Billionaire Ortega founded the Amancio Ortega Foundation in 2001, a charity focused on education and social welfare. In 2017, the foundation donated $344 million to public hospitals in Spain to fund the latest technology in breast cancer screening and treatment.

In 2020, Mr. Ortega personally donated about $68 million to help fight Covid-19, including buying ventilators, masks and testing kits for the Spanish health system.

Phien An ( according to Business Insider, LeadersLeague )