Zara founder took over richest man title from Bill Gates
Amancio Ortega, cofounder of Spanish retailing giant Inditex, is now the richest person on the planet, with a $200 million edge over previous leader Bill Gates.
Ortega has held the top position three other times, but he has always relinquished the lead within two days. Most recently, he surpassed Gates on Tuesday, after shares of Inditex—the parent company to fashion chain Zara—rose just over 1%. But by the end of the afternoon he was $100 million behind the Microsoft co-founder.
Then, on Wednesday, Ortega regained the top spot. As of 12:05 pm Eastern Time, he was richer than Gates by a modest margin of $200 million.
Ortega, 81, is now worth an estimated $85 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time rankings of the world’s billionaires. His net worth is up $1.2 billion in the last month, but his ascent has also been aided by declines to the fortunes of Gates and Jeff Bezos, who have each held the title of world’s richest at some point this summer.