Bertelli is a co-chief executive officer of Prada SpA, the Italian luxury-goods company. He has run the Milan-based fashion house since the late 1970s with his wife and co-CEO Miuccia Prada. The publicly traded company had revenue of 3.2 billion euros ($3.6 billion) in 2019. Its labels include Miu Miu, Prada and Church's.
Patrizio Bertelli's net worth of $5.62B can buy ...
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The majority of Bertelli's fortune is derived from his 28% stake in Prada, the Italian fashion company he controls with his wife, Miuccia Prada. He holds his shares through Milan-based Prada Holding, according to the 2019 annual report, published on its website.
The billionaire collected about $675 million selling shares in the company's initial public offering in 2011, and has received more than $300 million of dividends, according to company filings and an analysis of Bloomberg data. The value of his cash investments is based on these proceeds, market performance, insider transactions, taxes and charitable contributions.
Through Stefano Cantino, Prada Group's director of communication, Bertelli declined to comment on his net worth.
Bertelli was born in 1946 in Arezzo, a town in Italy's Tuscany region, into a family with a long legal tradition. When Bertelli was six years old his father died, leaving his mother, a high school teacher, to raise him and his brother. He studied engineering at Bologna University and in 1968 started his own business making and selling belts and bags.
He met Miuccia Prada at a trade fair in Milan in the late 1970s. Prada had taken over her family's leather-accessories store and hired Bertelli to be one of her main suppliers. Bertelli also became a mentor to Prada, advising her on how to expand the company's product lines beyond leather goods and into footwear, as well as men and women's apparel. Prada opened new stores in New York, Madrid, London, Paris and Tokyo in 1986. They married a year later.
The couple helped oversee Prada's development into a global luxury powerhouse. The company acquired new labels -- including men's footwear brand Church's -- and also opened its own, including Miuccia's line Miu Miu in 1993. Prada announced plans to sell shares in a public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange in January 2011, with a target to raise as much as $3 billion. The June IPO ended up raising $2.14 billion after cutting the final share price by almost a fifth due to weak demand from retail investors.
A keen sailor, Bertelli sponsored sailing team Luna Rossa in the 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2013 editions of the America's Cup, sport's oldest trophy and most prestigious sailing competition. The team was runner-up three times. Bertelli, Prada's chief executive officer lives in Milan with Miuccia, the company's chairman, and their two sons Lorenzo and Guilio.