The Spanish founder of the Zara fashion chain has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world's richest man.
Amancio
Ortega's personal fortune leapt by $1.7billion this week to
$79.5billion - taking the Inditex owner past the Microsoft co-founder's
estimated $78.5billion.
Already
Europe's richest man, the 80-year-old - whose glamorous daughter Marta
is expected to take over management of the business - now tops the
global list.
Marta, 31, has undergone training at the firm, including stacking shelves when she was younger.
Despite
rumours that she is due to succeed her father, Inditex - parent company
to Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear - will not confirm her as
successor.
Forbes reported that Ortega became the world's richest man on Wednesday when Inditex shares went up 2.5 per cent.
He now has a larger net worth than US investor Warren Buffett and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
It is not
the first time Ortega has topped the list. He was briefly ahead of Bill
Gates in October before a surge in Microsoft shares put him back in
second place.
The
son of a railway worker from La Coruna in Spain, Ortega transformed
clothing group Inditex from a tiny family dressmaker into Spain's
biggest company.
He
has turned Zara into a byword in chic for the money-conscious,
transforming the apparel business with its'fast fashion' model.
Affordable
imitations of catwalk designscan move from drawing board to store
within two weeks, and poor sellers are pulled off the shop floor even
quicker.
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