Zara Founder Amancio Ortega Goes On $500m Property Spree To Beat Spanish Wealth Tax

Zara laminitis Amancio Ortega has gone connected a world spot shopping spree, snapping up much than $500 cardinal (€460 million) successful existent property to protect his luck from Spain’s fierce wealthiness taxation laws, according to Bloomberg.

Ortega’s family office, Pontegadea, has purchased a five-star edifice successful Paris, a residential artifact successful Florida, and a commercialized building connected Barcelona’s Diagonal Avenue. He is reportedly besides eyeing up an agency building successful Miami for $275 cardinal (€253 million).

The 89-year-old billionaire, who has a nett worthy of astir $104 cardinal (€89.4 billion), remains Inditex’s largest shareholder pinch a 59 per cent liking and received his biggest-ever yearly dividend payout – astir €3.1 cardinal – successful early May.

Why is Ortega spending money for illustration it’s going retired of fashion?

Spain is presently nan only EU state pinch a afloat wealth tax connected residents (it taxes nan worldwide nett wealthiness of individuals erstwhile it exceeds definite thresholds), and nan timepiece starts ticking erstwhile Ortega receives his dividend. “For Pontegadea nan prime is simple: redeploy each euro of that Zara dividend aliases watch eight-figure rate bleed distant each year,” said Marc Debois, laminitis of FO-Next, a family agency advisory firm, successful comments published by Business Standard.

This isn’t astir collecting shiny assets; it’s strategical liability management, and it’s turned Pontegadea into 1 of nan world’s astir progressive and powerful family finance offices.

Through Pontegadea, Ortega owns immoderate of nan world’s astir iconic buildings. These see nan Post Building successful London, New York’s historical Haughwout Building, and nan Southeast Financial Center successful Miami.

He besides holds commercialized and residential spot successful awesome cities from Toronto to Seoul. Big-name tenants see Amazon, Facebook, H&M, and Zara itself.

Pontegadea’s nett assets stood astatine €34.3 cardinal astatine nan extremity of 2024 – a 10.6 per cent emergence year-on-year, according to charismatic filings cited by Bloomberg.

Ortega isn’t conscionable buying buildings. Pontegadea has diversified into power infrastructure and number stakes successful nationalist companies. This is different maneuver to negociate Spain’s wealthiness tax.

Notable investments see a liking successful Spain’s Enagas SA (gas transport) successful 2019, a stock successful a Portuguese state company, and a 20 per cent liking successful Dutch parking patient Q-Park.

The patient is now reportedly successful talks pinch KKR and others to get nan Sabadell Financial Center successful Miami.

Spain’s richest man

Born to a railroad worker, Ortega built Inditex (the genitor institution of Zara) from nan crushed up successful 1963. He famously ne'er had a individual agency and stepped down arsenic president successful 2011.

His girl Marta Ortega, 41, took complete nan manner empire successful 2022. Meanwhile, Sandra Ortega, his 56-year-old girl from a erstwhile marriage, holds her precocious mother’s shares and has a luck of $12.4 cardinal (€10.7 billion), making her Spain’s richest woman, according to nan Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

At slightest one-fifth of nan world’s richest 500 individuals now usage family offices to negociate a mixed $4 trillion (€3.44 trillion), according to Bloomberg. Ortega’s attack highlights really Europe’s richest tin legally outmanoeuvre nationalist taxation regimes.

Should 1 of Europe’s richest men beryllium capable to legally shield billions while mean residents look a cost-of-living crisis? Or is Ortega simply playing nan crippled smart?

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