Amancio Ortega overthrows Bill Gates to become World's Richest Man - Forbes

The founder of Zara, Amancio Ortega, has beaten Bill Gates in the number one position of the world’s richest man.


In a new release by Forbes on Wednesday, Ortega beat out Bill Gates to become the richest person on Earth.

He currently has a $200 million edge over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, due in part to a particularly good week for the stock of Inditex, Zara’s parent company.

Forbes said that Ortega has crowded the world’s richest person three other times, but has always surrendered the No. 1 position within a day.

Despite Ortega’s enormous net worth, many people have never heard of him.

He is described as an incredibly private man rarely seen in public, and has given just a handful of interviews throughout his incredibly successful career.

Ortega’s career began when he founded fast-fashion giant Zara with his then-wife Rosalia in 1975.

His retail company Inditex SA, which owns Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear, has 7,385 outposts around the world.