#34

Dieter Schwarz

Source of wealth: Retail

86 years Male Fashion & Retail 🇩🇪 DE

Net Worth

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Earnings per second

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Biography

Dieter Schwarz owns Schwarz Group, a German discount grocery retailer with revenue of more than $200 billion.

Schwarz inherited the company from his father, Josef, who became a partner in Suedfruechte Grosshandel Lidl & Co., a fruit wholesaler, in 1930.

Dieter opened the first Lidl store in 1973, became CEO in 1977 when Josef died, and built Schwarz Group into Europe's largest retail empire, with 500,000 employees.

Lidl entered the U.S. in 2017, promising to convince consumers to "Rethink Grocery." Its stores are mostly in Virginia and North and South Carolina.

Schwarz Group is owned by a foundation, technically a limited liability company, but Dieter maintains full control and is the effective owner.

Perspective on their fortune

Gold

Everyday luxury

A Dieter Schwarz's fortune is equivalent to 424 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.

A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.

Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3

Dieter Schwarz could buy 113,131,761 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!

And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 20 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Dieter Schwarz will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.

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While billions of people struggle to access basic healthcare, education, and research, a single individual could fund entire national systems for centuries.

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Health

The price of life

Let's compare Dieter Schwarz's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country

Dieter Schwarz could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 28.3 years.

But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country

At the other extreme, Dieter Schwarz could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 12.5 years

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Education

Buying the future

Lowest education spending

Dieter Schwarz could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 18.5 years.

Highest education spending

But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Dieter Schwarz could pay for it in full for 25.2 years.

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Research

The monopoly of progress

Lowest research spending

Dieter Schwarz could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 106.0 years.

Highest research spending

But even if we compare the total wealth of Dieter Schwarz with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 2.4 years.