Ortega – From Spain and Richer than Buffet

While Spain is imploding, Spain’s richest man is getting richer by the day, now surpassing Buffet’s wealth. Meet this fascinating man, via Bloomberg.

Inside Inditex SA (ITX)’s concrete-and- glass headquarters in the Spanish town of Arteixo, a lithe woman slips into a dress that a seamstress working amid buzzing sewing machines stitched together just minutes earlier. A half circle of designers — looking like models themselves — nod approval.

In weeks, this and hundreds of others creations inspired by pop culture or couture catwalks will fill the company’s more than 1,600 Zara stores in 85 countries on six continents. Since opening the first shop in his seaside home of La Coruna in 1975, billionaire founder Amancio Ortega has built the world’s largest clothing retailer — and a fortune exceeding Warren Buffett’s, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its December cover package.

Ortega’s Buffett-beating billions haven’t changed him, people who work with the fashion mogul say.

After stepping down as Inditex chairman last year, he still travels a half-hour to headquarters most days from La Coruna, where residents speak the local Galician language. He usually settles at a table amid the designers, fabric experts and buyers for the Zara Woman line.

Wearing a simple shirt and slacks rarely of his own brands, which are cut for slimmer men, he confers on everything from placement of a zipper to the September debut of Zara’s Chinese website.

Full article here.