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The billionaire founder of Zara is to receive a company record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend this year from the world’s biggest fashion retailer.

Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now chair, will receive half his dividend in May and half in November – as will other shareholders.

Inditex, which owns a raft of high street chains including Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius and Oysho, said on Wednesday it would increase its dividend by 4% after a “robust operating performance” in 2025.

The payout narrowly outstrips a €3.1bn dividend handed to Ortega last year. He has a net worth of about $126.7bn (£94bn), making him the 15th wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.

Sales at Inditex, which has 5,460 stores across more than 90 countries and employs over 160,000 people, increased by 3.2% to €39.9bn in the year to 31 January 2026. Pre-tax profit rose by 5.8% to €8bn, according to results released on Wednesday.

Although Inditex closed 103 stores worldwide last year it shifted units to larger outlets, meaning its total selling space increased.

Ortega, who turns 90 this month, launched Zara from a small store in La Coruña, Galicia, northern Spain, in 1975. He is still regularly seen at the Inditex head office chatting with staff. He was a local clothing manufacturer who worked his way up from being a delivery boy at a shirtmakers to open his first shop.

In previous years, Ortega has used his dividend payment to fund property purchases including London’s The Post Building, New York’s Haughwout Building and the Southeast Financial Center in Miami, according to Bloomberg.

Ortega reportedly raced to spend last year’s dividend on property in the face of Spain’s wealth tax. It is the only country in the EU to have a fully fledged wealth tax, with residents exempt from the levy if they invest income within a 12-month window in assets considered to be “economic activity”.

Inditex said on Wednesday it expected to open 5% more store space this year and continue to grow online. It said it had started the new year strongly with sales up by 9% between 1 February and 8 March, excluding the impact of exchange rates.

Inditex told analysts it had not yet seen any interruption to the flow of stock from disruption in the Middle East, which usually acts as a hub for fashion flown from producer countries such as Bangladesh.

The group plans to bring Lefties, its cut-price brand, to the UK this year and has also been looking for more sites for The Apartment, a concept that combines premium Zara clothing and homewares in a store laid out like an influencer’s home. Inditex is also opening new outlets in the US, Norway and Denmark, and its first store on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.

Inditex has been investing in technology, launching an AI-based virtual-fitting system that allows online shoppers to create an avatar from their own photos and generate images of it wearing real products.