The heir to the BMW empire and her richest wife Germany She claims that her life is neither more nor less difficult than we think.
In fact, Stefan Quandt's brother believes the same! The two brothers now own more than 40% of the BMW AG group, so they know well from both billions and… weights.
Susanne Klatten, now 58, inherited 19,2% of her Bavarian giants automotive industry, as the daughter of the third wife of the legendary industrialist Herbert Quandt, the man who launched BMW to business heights.
The magazine Forbes ranked it for 2019 at No. 46 (and No. 54 for 2020) of the richest people in the world, with its fortune currently amounting to 22,7 billion dollars. That is, making another $ 2020 million in a few months of 246. Bloomberg has it at No. 61 in the world, estimating its fortune at 18,8 billion.
Her 54-year-old brother, Stefan Quandt, inherited 23,7% of BMW and was ranked in the Forbes list of No. 60 richest people in the world for 2019 and No. 98 for 2020. His fortune is now estimated at 16,7 , $ 259 billion, an increase of $ 2020 million since Forbes released its list of billionaires for XNUMX.
Both brothers have a seat on the BMW Board of Directors and Quandt serves as Vice President.
Susanne, an economist with a master's degree in business administration, is richer because she has an even more important source of income. You see you are the sole owner of Altana AG pharmaceutical inherited from her grandfather and transformed into a multinational group of drugs and chemicals with an international impact.
Altana currently has a turnover of $ 2,5 billion. The richest woman in Germany and the second richest German citizen, but also the husband and mother of three children, inherited significant shares in the wind energy company Nordex AG and the carbon fiber manufacturer SGL.
But why did she tell us last summer that the money that came down from her "is a burden"? And why does her brother believe the same?
The enormous responsibility that such a legacy entails, but also the envy of all others, were cited by the two brothers as the main reason for at least the special characterization of billions as a "burden".
"Many believe that we live permanently on a yacht in the Mediterranean," Klatten said in one of her rare interviews on June 20, 2019 in the German magazine "Manager Magazin" and continued fearlessly: "The role of guardian of such a property it also has other personal aspects that are not so nice ".
Her brother, who also owns shares in the homeopathic company Heel and the logistics group Logwin, hastened to add: "For both of us, it is undoubtedly not the money that motivates us. "Above all, it is our responsibility to secure jobs in Germany."
In the fatal, in every way, interview, they said more. After declaring themselves "comfortable" with their high-ranking roles, they stressed that they struggled a lot with the responsibility of taking such important positions at such a young age.
Quandt, who was 30 years old when he took his first seat on the BMW board, typically noted that he would prefer to work for a few years as a "simple" employee somewhere or even study architecture.
After challenging the reasoning behind him inheritance tax, he said that "I never had a starting point, and now I come to show everyone how it. Ή I was in constant doubt, I lived in doubt".
Klatten, on the other hand, first entered the news industry in 1978, when police thwarted a plan to abduct both herself and her mother, Johanna, saying wealth redistribution was not working. And that a just society allows its citizens to seek opportunities according to their abilities.
"My own dynamics emanate from the role of the heir," she concluded, "I work hard for this every day."
The two brothers, raised in wealth and luxury, revealed another ugly aspect of being so rich. The common misconceptions of everyone else, that is, about what such a property means and how difficult it makes everyday life…
It was in 1978 that German police prevented the abduction of 16-year-old Susanne and her mother by climbing the front pages of the German press.
Until then, Herbert Quandt's father had not just saved BMW from her bankruptcy, with whom he flirted for a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s, but had made her a real colossus.
Susanne studied economics at undergraduate and postgraduate level and went through several advertising and banking in Germany and England, looking for her own path.
And as she always acknowledged that huge family wealth was a problem, she usually worked under a pseudonym (Susanne Kant) so as not to be recognized! He was already a billionaire, having inherited 20% of Altana AG from the age of 50,1, with the death of her father in 1982.
At some point he decided to start his own business and within a few years it reached world fame. The German DAX index tells us today that Altana is in the top 30 companies on its stock market Frankfurt. In 2009 Susanne bought all the shares of the pharmacy that she did not own and today she is the only shareholder.
Herbert, however, left her a 12,5% in BMW, which after the death of her mother in 2015 climbed to 19,2%. And so since 1997 he was on the board of directors of the group.
At one point, the "hermit", as the German Media describes her, from the fact that she rarely appears in public and even more rarely gives interviews, went to work incognito at BMW. She practiced as Susanne Kant, where she met her husband, Jan Klatten.
In fact, she left him for years in the darkness of her true identity, as at least the gossip of BMW wants, in order to make sure of his pure intentions. The two eventually married in 1990 and later had three children.
In 2007, however, Klatten made headlines again in Germany for a romance she had with Swiss playboy Helg Sgarbi, who seduced her and now blackmailed her into reporting in the newspapers.
"THE gigolo against the billionaire "was the title given by the scandalous magazines in the case that reached the courts, as Sgarbi had tried to make money from several other rich ladies of the European elite.
According to the British "Guardian", the playboy threatened her with a video of their tender moments that she intended to send to her husband and the BMW board. He did not receive a single franc and spent 6 years in prison. She divorced her husband in 2018…