Amancio Ortega is once again among the ten largest fortunes on the planet that Forbes monitors in real time thanks to the rise in the stock market of Inditex and the strength of his real estate holding company Pontegadea, which have catapulted the fortune of the Spanish millionaire to 143.5 billion dollars.
This renewed stock market push has allowed him to re-enter the ‘Top 10’ of greatest fortunes on the planet, and even compete for ninth position with the veteran investor Warren Buffett although, as stated Digital Economyonly occasionally.
From the 2025 bump to the return to the ‘top 10’. In June 2025, the combination of Inditex’s weaker stock market performance and global market volatility eventually removed Amancio Ortega from the exclusive group of Forbes’ top ten fortunes in the world, falling below fourteenth place.
The textile giant’s stock went on to chain several months of declines after quarterly results that grew, but not at the rate that the market expected, and that sharply cut the valuation of its assets, closely linked to the evolution of the company that it founded and of which it still retains 59.294%.
The Inditex rally. However, as of December the situation took a 180 degree turn after the presentation of Inditex’s third quarter results and investors once again showed their confidence in the textile multinational.
To put this boom in context, at the beginning of December, each share of Zara’s parent company was trading at just over 49 euros, and its capitalization was around 152,934 million euros. However, weeks later, the title is already trading at just over 56 euros and Inditex’s stock market value exceeded 172.2 billion euros.
…And the solidity of Pontegadea. In parallel, Pontegadea, which channels and invests most of its participation in Inditex and the dividends generated by the textile empire it founded, acted as an amplifier of its wealth by closing some of the largest real estate operations in its history.
Pontegadea closed the year with a portfolio that has continued to add assets in offices, logistics and luxury residential in large international capitals, which has only increased the strength of its assets.
The “overtaking” time for Warren Buffett. The meteoric rise of Ortega, who has risen several positions at once, has reached its peak when the Forbes real-time index placed him in ninth position on the global list of fortunes, just ahead of retired investor Warren Buffett.
That day, the founder of Inditex closed the session with a fortune valued at 146.9 billion dollars, slightly above that of the Omaha investor, whose fortune was weighed down by a fall in the stock market, resulting in a cut of about 654 million euros. However, the stock market is what everyone else plays while Buffett wins, so the veteran investor recovered his position the next day.
Ortega, Ballmer and the new order among the ultra-rich. Ortega remains in tenth place, with a fortune estimated at 143.5 billion dollars. That level places him just ahead of Steve Ballmer, whose wealth linked to Microsoft and the Los Angeles Clippers moves above $140 billion.
The geographical distribution of the ‘top 10’ leaves a photograph in which Ortega is once again the only great Spanish fortune in a select club dominated by American technology giants and by the European figure of Bernard Arnault, at the head of the luxury conglomerate LVMH.
In WorldOfSoftware | Amancio Ortega: the billionaire who lives like another neighbor. Except for private jets and superyachts
Imagen | GTRES, Flickr (Fortune Live Media)
