This is how Germany’s richest woman invests her fortune

When her father died in the 1980s, Susanne Klatten inherited a fortune, including shares in BMW AG. Today she is a successful entrepreneur, owner of the chemical company Altana AG and also invests in several companies.

She is considered the richest woman in Germany. According to “Business Insider” her fortune is estimated at more than 21 billion euros. In an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the 61-year-old revealed how she invests her money.

‘I am an entrepreneur. The focus is on valuable investments in companies. “I trust innovation,” says Klatten and continues: “As an entrepreneur you always think: in the past, in the present, but especially in the future.”

The future would also include “innovative materials, sustainability, wind energy” – these are topics close to her heart. Klatten sees it as her duty as an entrepreneur to look to the future.

But she also finds it important in her work that people are enthusiastic about topics and ideas. In the past, she had always had topics she was passionate about. “I still remember what first excited me about SKion: technology related to water,” she says about the investment company she founded in 2006. “This became SKion Water – today it is a group with more than 4,500 employees. Later I became enthusiastic about carbon as a material.”

Susanne Klatten is the daughter of major industrialist Herbert Quandt, a German industrialist and member of the NSDAP, who died in 1982. With his death, his assets were divided between her, her mother Johanna Quandt and her brother Stefan Quandt.

Klatten himself also pursued a professional career in the entrepreneurial field. After school, she first trained as an advertising executive, then studied business administration in Great Britain and later decided to train in the management sector. After her first professional positions, she finally became an official member of the Supervisory Board of Altana AG in 1993.