BMW heirs are wealthiest Germans


With an estimated wealth of 34 billion euros ($39 billion), two siblings who own 47 percent of shares in the car giant BMW are the richest people in Germany, according to a Thursday media report. Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, who are the car company's major shareholders, increased their combined fortune by 2.5 billion euros in the last year, according to business publication Manager Magazin.

Number two on Germany's rich list is the Reimann family, which owns one of the world's biggest coffee companies and also bought out the U.S. drinks company Dr Pepper Snapple. They lag just behind the BMW heirs with 33 billion euros, the magazine reported. In third place comes the founder of supermarket chain Lidl, Dieter Schwarz, with an estimated worth of 25 billion euros.

Manager Magazin compiled their list using the companies' stock market closing rates on September 14, and did not differentiate between whether wealth was divided between families or shareholder groups, or belonged to individuals alone. Another German magazine, Bilanz, returned drastically different results in an August wealth survey. Bilanz named Schwarz as the richest person in Germany with an estimated 39.5 billion euros to his name.