Rosalia Mera, World's Richest Self-Made Woman

 Rosalia Mera, cofounder of Spanish brand Zara and the wealthiest self-made woman on the planet, has died. She was 69.

Mera was vacationing on the island of Menorca with her daughter, Sandra, according to the Spanish news site ABC.es, when she suffered a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday. She died 24 hours later, Spanish media is reporting. A statement on the website of Inditex parent company to Zara, acknowledges Mera’s death.

Mera dropped out of school at age 11 to work as a seamstress. With husband Amancio Ortega, she started making dressing gowns and lingerie in their living room. Together, the couple built their business into a 15.9 billion euro ($21 billion) global fashion empire, best known for its Zara brand. Ortega is now the fourth-richest person on the globe, with a net worth of $51.3 billion as of Thursday’s market close.

Mera was a billionaire, too, among the elite set of self-made women who could claim she’d earned her way onto the Forbes billionaires list. Although she and Ortega divorced long ago, Mera retained a 5.1% stake in the $21 billion (2012 sales) Inditex, the basis for her $6.1 billion net worth as of our latest Forbes count.

Mera diversified after the retailer’s 2001 IPO, which netted her $600 million at the time. She placed her money in causes dear to her heart: a marine fish farming group, a company that looks for cancer treatments in products from the ocean, and a maker of a fingerprinting system for newborns. She was also a major investor in London’s exclusive Bulgari Hotel, and ran a contest for young jazz musicians in Spain. Her Paideia Foundation works to integrate people with physical and mental disabilities, like her son Marcos, into larger society.

Mera is survived by her daughter, Sandra, and son, Marcos. Ortega’s youngest daughter, Marta, has a different mother.

Source: Forbes

The Climb And Slide Of Ambitious Indian Entrepreneur, Jignesh Shah

The story of the phenomenal rise of National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) promoter Jignesh Shah is rapidly turning into a tale of an ignominious descent. Shah’s decade-and-a-half old empire built with enormous entrepreneurial grit has started to crumble.

Earlier this month, the government ordered the NSEL to suspend trading after alleged irregularities came to light. The development singed several leading Indian brokerage houses and thousands of investors. Even as a government investigation is making slow progress, NSEL has denied that it has done anything illegal and has promised to repay its liabilities. But it was unable to marshal the funds to make an initial repayment earlier this week, signalling a further crisis and leading to the sacking of its CEO and several top executives.

Shah’s flagship Financial Technologies, the holding company of the commodities exchange and several other businesses, grew at a stunning pace for over a decade. Shah last figured in the Forbes list of richest Indians until 2010 (#87) with a fortune of $610 million. But in the past month, the parent Financial Technologies’ and its affiliate stocks have plunged to a fraction (about $100 million) of their peak value of about $2 billion, effectively wiping off Shah’s fortunes.

It has been quite a slide for Shah who started as a supplier of technology services to stock exchanges. He grabbed every opportunity he saw, first setting up a commodity exchange, MCX, which dominated India’s commodity futures market. Besides launching the NSEL, he expanded to set up an equity exchange much to the consternation of old guard at established exchanges, BSE and NSE. He set up trading exchanges in five other countries including a gold exchange in Dubai. In India, several allied businesses sprouted up such as the National Bulk Handling Corporation, which set up warehouses for commodities traded on MCX, and then offered warehousing services and credit to farmers.

Shah’s troubles began after it became known that some NSEL brokers’ clients had been allowed to take longer-term forward contracts, despite the exchange only being permitted to handle spot contracts in commodities, like sugar and wheat. NSEL reportedly permitted 30-40 day forward contracts on the basis of warehouse receipts trading, without checking whether corresponding commodities existed in the warehouses.

Today, NSEL cannot ‘sell’ those commodities to make repayments since there are no real commodities to cover the outstanding exposures.

NSEL owes 5,600 crore ($880 million) to investors but was able to rustle up only 83 crore rupees ($13 million) yesterday, less than 50% of its scheduled first payout. The market fears that the dues are unrecoverable. If the government declares the NSEL board incompetent, Jignesh Shah could be barred from holding positions on any boards including that of his commodity exchange MCX and his equity exchange MCX-SX. Shah is clearly running out of time.

Source: Forbes