Marta Ortega on Friday took the reins of Zara-owner Inditex, the group founded by her father, and faces an immediate challenge after the fashion giant temporarily closed shops in Russia, its second biggest market.
With neither fanfare nor ceremony, the 38-year-old daughter of multibillionaire Amancio Ortega took over the world's biggest fashion retailer and its 6,500 shops.Her nomination"comes into effect today," confirmed a spokesman for Inditex, describing it as a"low key" handover for the group, which has 174,000 employees and eight brands including Massimo Dutti, Bershka and teen label Stradivarius.
Marta Ortega's promotion has been on the cards for several years but was only announced at the end of November as part of a reorganisation engineered by her father, now 86. Although she never said she was the Inditex owner's daughter, her colleagues told El Pais newspaper they quickly figured it out after noticing her Rolex watch."The first week, I thought I was not going to survive," she told The Wall Street Journal in a rare interview in August 2021.When her appointment was initially announced in November, it caused concern in the business community, triggering a fall in the company's share price but such fears appear to have evaporated.
Worth some 62 billion euros, Inditex nearly tripled its profits last year to 3.2 billion euros, but its outlook for 2022 has been overshadowed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "The current financial year promises to be very complex, due to Inditex's exposure in Russia and the rest of Europe" and"rising production costs" caused by record inflation, Credit Suisse said in a note.
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