Marta Ortega, daughter of billionaire Amancio Ortega, will become this Friday the most powerful woman in the mundial “ready-to-wear” when he takes over the reins of the Spanish giant Inditex, Zara’s parent company, which is at a key moment for its future.
Described as low-key and reserved, the 38-year-old, the youngest of the three children of Amancio Ortegawas seen for years as the successor his father’s birthright at the head of the emporium of 6,500 stores and 174,000 employees.
But it was only last November when his appointment was made official, within the framework of a reorganization orchestrated by Amancio Ortega himself, after a decade of “regency” of his former right-hand man Pablo Isla, architect of the group’s expansion at an international level.
“We have been preparing this transition for some time,” Isla explained at the time.Marta has been working in the company for fifteen years. He has promoted many initiatives (…) he is a person who knows the company very well, “he stressed.
Born on January 10, 1984 from the union of Amancio Ortega and his second wife Flora Pérez, Marta Ortega, with a slender figure and long blonde hair, grew up in La Coruña, a Galician city located in the extreme north-west of Spain, together with her brothers Sandra and Marcos.
After studying at a Catholic school in Galicia and at a prestigious private high school in Switzerland, he graduated in 2007 from the European Business School in London, a city where she would take her first steps, incognito, in the family group, as a saleswoman in a Zara store.
“The first week, I thought I wouldn’t make it. But then you get addicted to the store. Some people never want to leave.”told about that experience to the Wall Street Journal is passionate about horseback riding.
Although according to the newspaper El País, his colleagues in the store, surprised to see him with a Rolex watch, realized who he was.
Marta Ortega, lack of experience?
Marta Ortega, who soon joined the Inditex headquarters in Galicia, “grew up immersed in the company” and during her career “established many links with the world of fashion,” Alfred Vernis, a professor at the school of fashion, told AFP. business Esade and former executive of the textile group.
Settled in La Coruña with her second husband Carlos Torretta and their two children, Marta Ortega has worked in recent years supervising the design and promoting the branda, but without having held any executive position or having managed a subsidiary.
A fact that partly explains his lack of visibility: he has almost never given interviews to the media, although he has occasionally appeared in photos in celebrity magazines, during, for example, equestrian events.
Will his lack of experience in management and finance be a disadvantage? When his appointment was announced, the decline in the stock on the stock market made clear the concern of the market. But, little by little, the fears seem to have vanished.
Martha Ortega, who will receive 1 million euro annuallys (1.10 million dollars) in her position at the head of Inditex, “she has been very well prepared” and “she is well surrounded”, estimates Vernis, who recalls that two of her uncles hold management positions: one at the head of Zara, the other by Massimo Dutti.
A complicated 2022
The daughter of Amancio Ortega will occupy the presidency of the group and not its general management, which will include Óscar García Maceiras, from Banco Santander. “It will be he who will have to make the executive decisions,” although “she will have to play a role” in the face of the challenges that the group will face, Vernis said.
Founded in 1985 by Amancio Ortega, the son of a railway worker who ended up becoming the richest man in Spain, Inditex, world leader in mass fashion, prepares for a complicated 2022mainly due to the war in Ukraine, which led him to suspend the activities of 502 Russian stores.
In addition, the group is immersed in a delicate “green shift” to reduce its environmental impact, being the textile industry one of the main polluters in the world. To achieve the goal “there is still a long way to go”, warns Vernis, for whom this strategy “will have a cost” for Inditex.