Zara founder becomes world's largest real estate owner

The founder of Inditex (brands Zara, Oysho, Massimo Dutti, and others), 90-year-old Amancio Ortega, has become the world's largest real estate owner. Forbes estimates his net worth at $141 billion. He owns more than 200 properties in 13 countries: from office skyscrapers to wind farms, from California to South Korea.

Amancio Ortega's signature acquisitions include a 43-story skyscraper in Madrid and the Royal Bank Plaza tower in Toronto, whose windows are coated in pure gold. Ortega doesn't buy palaces, but strategically important buildings that can be leased long-term to large companies. Last November, for example, the Spanish billionaire paid approximately $850 million in cash for the historic Canada Post building in Vancouver—a massive tech hub whose office space is leased to Amazon.

Since listing the world's largest clothing retailer, Inditex, on the Madrid Stock Exchange in 2001, the businessman has spent around $24 billion on 216 properties in nearly 100 countries.

The son of a railroad worker, Amancio Ortega began his career at age 14 as a delivery boy in a shirt shop. In the 1960s, he and his then-wife, Rosalía Mera, a seamstress, began making dresses and lingerie. In 1975, they launched the Zara brand, followed by Inditex ten years later. The couple divorced in 1986, though Rosalía remained a board member until 2004 and a shareholder until her death in 2013.

Photo: inditex.com, Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images