Spanish owner of Zara overtakes Mark Zuckerberg on Forbes' rich list

Amancio Ortega, the founder of the Inditex group which owns Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius, and Lefties, is by far the richest man in Spain, and is the thirteenth richest person in the world after climbing ten places on the Forbes rich. The ranking published this week reveals that he now has a fortune valued at 77.3 billion dollars (71 billion euros), which is almost 30% more than last year.

This now places him above the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who sits in 16th place with 64.4 billion dollars, and Sergey Brin, former president of Alphabet (Google's parent company), who is in 14th place on the list with 76 billion dollars.

Elon Musk lost the top spot this year after buying Twitter, which hurt the value of his other company, Tesla, on the stock market. Even so, he still has a net worth of 180 billion dollars. But the pole position now goes to Frenchman Bernard Arnault, who is the chairman of luxury group LVMH, owner of Louis Vuitton, with a 211 billion dollar fortune.

They are followed by Jeff Bezos (Amazon) with a wealth of 114 billion dollars, which is 30% less than last year. In 2017 Bezos was the richest man in the world, but since then his fortune, minus the exceptional pandemic years, has been falling behind and the crisis in the technology sector that began in 2022 makes him the person who lost the most money last year.

To find the second richest person in Spain, you have to go to 344th place on the Forbes list, where Sandra Ortega, the daughter of the founder of Inditex, is listed with a fortune of 6.9 billion dollars. Third place goes to Rafael del Pino, chairman of Ferrovial and holder of 20% of the shares, who is ranked 624th with 4.4 billion dollars in assets.

Overall, it has not been a good year for the world's richest people. The top 25 lost 200 billion dollars, with total wealth amounting to 2.1 trillion dollars. The Forbes list indicates that in total there are 2,640 billionaires in the world, 28 people less than last year, with a total fortune of 12.2 trillion dollars.