Forbes list: German teenager youngest billionaire in the world - because of dm
Created: 04/21/2022, 16:27
dm heir Kevin Lehmann from Germany remains the youngest billionaire in the world.
(Iconic image) © Uli Deck/dpa
The current Forbes list of the richest people in the world shows: dm heir Kevin Lehmann from Germany remains the youngest billionaire in the world.
However, he slips down the list.
Karlsruhe – The German drugstore chain dm is known throughout Germany – and a real success story: In the summer of 1973, the entrepreneur Götz Werner, who died that year, opened his first self-service drugstore (dm) in Karlsruhe – with three times the area and a much reduced range in comparison to conventional drugstores.
dm: Lehmann receives half of the shares
But after the opening of the second branch, Werner lacked the money for further expansion.
That is why the entrepreneur Günther Lehmann took a stake in dm in 1973.
He gave Werner the necessary money and received half the shares in return, but was never actively involved in the business.
From then on it was almost all uphill: Dm expanded, relied on alliances, early on organic and on a slightly different leadership.
Customer orientation, profit sharing - the company as a social organism with "apprentices" instead of apprentices and theater workshops.
Across Europe, dm employs more than 66,000 people (as of September 30, 2021), almost 43,000 of them in Germany, has almost 4,000 stores and achieves annual sales of over 12 billion euros.
The head of the company has been Götz Werner's son Christoph since September 2019.
dm makes Kevin Lehmann the youngest billionaire in the world
However, half of the company still belongs to the Lehmanns: Günther Lehmann is said to have signed his son Kevin David Lehmann over the shares in dm a few years ago.
A trustee managed his assets until his 18th birthday.
When he came of age, the US magazine Forbes
declared the teenager
the "youngest billionaire in the world" last year.
The magazine estimated his fortune at 2.8 billion euros in 2021.
He ranked 925th in the full ranking of the richest people in the world.
In the current
Forbes
list, he has now slipped to number 1292.
The magazine now estimates his fortune at 2.2 billion euros.
But he remains the youngest billionaire in the world.
What Kevin Lehmann thinks of all this is not publicly known.
The 19-year-old lives largely anonymously and avoids the public.
(lma/dpa)