$2.8 B
Hailing from a family of merchants whose business roots trace back to the founding of department store CW Jung in the city of Duisburg in 1906, secretive brothers Michael Schmidt-Ruthenbeck and Reiner Schmidt are heirs to a piece of the Metro Group retail fortune. Their grandfather Karl Schmidt expanded into the wholesale trade in the 1920s, and his sons Ernst and Wilhelm (father of Michael and Rainer) opened the first Metro hypermarket in Essen in 1963. The following year they formed a partnership with the Haniel family and the late billionaire Otto Beisheim to propagate Metro Cash & Carry — a chain of self-service wholesale markets. Metro AG went public in 1996, and the international colossus known today as Metro Group, with revenue in excess of $60 billion, includes wholesale cash & carry (Metro), food retailing (Real) and consumer electronics (Media-Saturn). Metro Group employs approximately 203,000 people in about 30 countries. Neither Michael or Rainer Schmidt-Ruthenbeck is involved in the management of the company. Michael owns around 13.5% of Metro, while Reiner is believed to have disposed of most if not all of his Metro shares, some of which appear to have endowed a charitable foundation, Stiftung Meridian. The family fortune also underwrites another German foundation, Stiftung Mercator GmbH; formed in 1996, it has spent almost $500 million financing more than 1,200 projects ranging from climate change mitigation to cultural education. A Swiss family foundation, Stiftung Mercator Schweiz, founded in 1998, works independently of the German foundation but focuses on similar themes.
Michael & Rainer Schmidt-Ruthenbeck Net Worth: Michael & Rainer Schmidt-Ruthenbeck are German brothers and businessmen who have a net worth of $2.6 billion. The media-shy siblings own 16% of the global diversified retailer Metro AG which is based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Once the world’s third largest retailer, the Metro group was founded in 1964 by the recently deceased billionaire Otto Beisheim who formed a partnership with the Schmidt-Ruthenbeck family and the Haniel family. Today, the Metro Group is said to have stores in twenty-five European countries, five Asian countries and one in Africa. However, neither of the Schmidt-Ruthenbeck brothers is involved in the management of the group and they only stand as shareholders. Thus, they saw a $100 million decrease in their fortune from a year ago as Metro shares have dropped in the last twelve months because of Europe’s economic weakness. In addition to their share in the Metro group, the two brothers also possess a chain of 11 luxury hotels and spas called Travel Charm with operations in Germany, Austria and Italy. Business aside, they fund the Mercator Foundation, which supports projects in climate change and arts education. The foundation, which has a current endowment of $145 million, has financed almost 600 projects with more than $200 million to date.
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