Fashion billionaire Amancio Ortega bought Hotel Banke in Paris for €97 million ($113 million), the Zara brand founder’s second property acquisition in the French city in the past year.
Ortega’s family office Pontegadea acquired the building from Derby Hotels, a spokesman for the Spanish firm said, confirming a report in newspaper Expansion. The five-star hotel is located in central Paris, near the Palais Garnier opera theatre.
Pontegadea holds Ortega’s 59 percent stake in Zara-owner Inditex SA and reinvests its dividends, mainly in real estate. The family office also holds investments in infrastructure and energy assets.
This year, Ortega had already acquired an apartment building in Fort Lauderdale for about €165 million and an office building in Barcelona for €250 million. It will be the first year Ortega, 89, receives more than €3 billion in dividends from Inditex, the company he founded more than 50 years ago in northwestern Spain.
In 2024, Pontegadea acquired a commercial building in Paris for about €200 million.
Pontegadea’s strategy is to invest mainly in high-end commercial and residential real estate, mostly in a handful of cities in western Europe, as well as in the US and Canada. The firm rarely invests in hotels.
Inditex, the world’s largest clothing firm, has a market value of €136 billion. Ortega’s personal fortune amounts to about €103 billion, making him Spain’s wealthiest person and Europe’s second richest, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
By Rodrigo Orihuela
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