Susanne Klatten Net Worth & Biography

German businesswoman, Susanne Klatten, is currently the richest woman in Germany. A daughter of the legendary business tycoon, Herbert Werner Quandt, and his entrepreneur wife, Johanna Maria Quandt, Susanne is an heiress who owns just over 19 percent of the stake in the German automaker BMW. Upon the death of her father, she also became the owner of a majority stake in her grandfather’s pharmaceutical and chemical business Altana AG. Apart from serving in the board of the pharmaceutical company as well as the automobile company, this billionaire is also involved in a number of other business ventures that add profits to her net worth. She owns shares in the used oil recycling company Avista Oil, Dutch biotech company Paques, German graphite maker SGL Carbon, and the German turbine company Nordex. More details follow in the next paragraph.

Early Life: Childhood, Family, Education

She was born Susanne Hanna Ursula Quandt on 28 April 1962 in Bad Homburg. She is one of the children of Johanna Maria Quandt and Herbert Werner Quandt. Her father, Herbert, was a German billionaire and industrialist who many people regard as the man who saved the German automobile brand BMW from collapsing and made it a profitable, internationally renowned business venture. Susanne has a brother named Stefan Quandt. He is the deputy chairman of the supervisory board at BMW.

After earning a degree in business finance, Susanne spent two years working for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in the early 1980s. She later attended the University of Buckingham and also studied at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne.

Professional Life: Entrepreneur, Heiress

Initially, Susanne worked with several companies at the beginning of her vocational life. She spent brief periods working for companies like Young & Rubicam, Dresdner Bank, Bankhaus Reuschel & Co, and the American management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

When her father, Herbert Quandt, passed away, he left his 12.5 percent stake in BMW to her.  In 1997, Susanne joined her elder brother, Stefan Quandt, on BMW’s supervisory board. Another inheritance her father left her is a majority stake in the chemical and pharmaceutical company Altana AG which was owned by her grandfather.

Once she had joined the company, Susanne started making efforts towards taking the company to newer heights and momentous growth was observed during her tenure in leadership. The company which was featured in the German DAX list of top 30 companies later sold its pharmaceutical wing in 2006 to Norwegian pharmaceutical company Nycomed for a reported sum of 4.5 billion euros.

In 2009, Susanne became the sole owner of the business, buying the remaining shares apart from the 50.1 percent stake her father left her. She became the deputy chair of the company which had a turnover of about $2.5 billion annually.

Asides from those two major businesses, Susanne has also made significant investments in other businesses. She owns almost 25 percent of the European wind turbines manufacturer and distributor Nordex, as well as 8 percent of the shares in SGL Carbon SE, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of carbon products. Further, she owns shares in the German oil recycling company Avista Oil and in the Dutch biotech company Paques.

Personal Life: Husband, Children, Private Interests, Controversies

While doing her internship at BMW, Susanne met Jan Klatten who was working as an engineer. They got connected and fell in love shortly. The couple were married from 1990 to 2018, and they have three children together.

Susanne got involved in a controversy when a Swiss conman named Helg Russak Sgarbi blackmailed her about publishing evidence of the two having a romantic affair. The conman had a record of having been involved in related cases where he threatened rich women in a similar fashion to gain financial benefits. Sgarbi was eventually arrested along with his partner in crime, Ernano Barretta, an Italian hotel owner who had allegedly recorded Susanne’s clandestine meetings with the blackmailer with hidden cameras and was helping him in blackmailing her. Sgarbi and Barretta were sentenced to 6 and 7 years of jail term, respectively.

Susanne Klatten Net Worth: Salary, Income Sources, Assets

As of the time of this publication, Susanne Klatten’s net worth is estimated at $19 billion. Susanne is credited for being the wealthiest woman in Germany, and the 44th wealthiest person in the world. She got her financial breakthrough after inheriting half of her father’s billion-dollar chemical and pharmaceutical business in addition to a 12.5% stake in BMW, a German automobile company that she helped build and turn into a world-class business.

Throughout the years, this billionaire has used false names in order to ensure her safety and protect her identity. She started doing this after a kidnapping in the late 1970s. Ms. Susanne Klatten and her husband and children currently reside in Munich, Germany. She is a philanthropist and remains one of the largest contributors to the center-right political party and the Christian Democratic Union.