Amancio Ortega looks west as he expands his property empire

AMANCIO ORTEGA, the billionaire Inditex founder, has expanded his real estate empire with the €213 million ($232 million) acquisition of the West Loop Tower in Chicago.

The tower located on 727 Madison Avenue has 492 luxury properties distributed over 45 storeys and is Chicago’s tallest building west of the Kennedy Expressway.

The operation was carried out on August 4 by Pontegadea, the company which oversees the real estate and private equity investments made by Ortega, Spain’s richest man and one of the world’s wealthiest people.

According to reports in the Real Deal specialist publication, the €213 million that Ortega paid was the highest price for a Chicago residential building since before the pandemic.

The US is currently attracting most of Ortega’s property investments, following Pontegadea’s  €505 million (€487 million) purchase of a New York apartment block in October 2022 and more luxury apartments, the Kiara Tower in Seattle, for €305 million ($324 million) at the end of last year.

Pontegadea is not limiting its US investments to residential properties, as Ortega bought an automated logistics centre in southern California’s Inland Empire Area from hypermarket chain Walmart €98.9 million ($109 million) in July.  This came twelve months after he first entered the logistics sector with the purchase of a FedEx platform in Menomonee Falls, near Milwaukee (Wisconsin) worth about €35.2 million ($35 million).

Nor did Pontegadea stop there, instead acquiring in September a block of seven distribution centres used by Amazon, Home Depot, Nestle, Fedex y TJX for approximately €830 million ($905 million).

Ortega will receive €2.217 billion this year in dividends, compared with € 1.718 billion last year. The Zara founder habitually invests part of the dividends he receives from the Inditex fashion company in the real estate sector through Pontegadea which focuses on purchasing and managing large buildings.

The company property portfolio contains mainly non-residential office buildings, which are located in prime positions in large cities in Spain, the UK, the United States and Asia.