Susanne Hanna Ursula Klatten (''

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

'' Quandt, born 28 April 1962) is a German

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

heiress, the daughter of Herbert and Johanna Quandt. As of January 2022, her

net worth Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, so net w ...

was estimated at US$23.4 billion, and the richest woman in Germany and the 50th richest person in the world according to the ''

Bloomberg Billionaires Index The ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index'', launched in March 2012, is a daily ranking of the world's 500 richest people based on their net worth. It features a profile of each billionaire, and includes a tool that allows users to compare the fortunes o ...

''.

Education

Klatten was born in

Bad Homburg Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (, ) is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, Germany, on the southern slope of the Taunus mountains. Bad Homburg is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. The town's official name is ''Bad Homburg ...

, West Germany. After gaining a degree in business finance, she worked for the advertising agency

Young & Rubicam VMLY&R was an American marketing and Marketing communications, communications company specializing in advertising, Digital media, digital and social media, sales promotion, direct marketing and brand identity consulting, formed from the 2020 mer ...

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

from 1981 to 1983. This was followed by a course in marketing and management at the

University of Buckingham The University of Buckingham (UB) is a non-profit private university#United Kingdom, private university in Buckingham, England, and the oldest of the country's six private universities. It was founded as the University College at Buckingham (U ...

, and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from IMD Business School in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

specialising in advertising. She gained further business experience in London with

Dresdner Bank Dresdner Bank AG () was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually ...

, the Munich branch of management consultants

McKinsey McKinsey & Company (informally McKinsey or McK) is an American multinational strategy and management consulting firm that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. Founded in 1926 by James O. McKinsey ...

and the bank Bankhaus Reuschel & Co.She has often worked under the name Susanne Kant. Klatten has received several honorary titles, including Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2004, and is a Honorary Graduate at University of Buckingham in 2022.

Investments

On her father's death she inherited his 50.1% stake in pharmaceutical and chemicals manufacturer Altana. She sits on Altana's supervisory board and helped transform it into a world-class corporation in the German

DAX The DAX (''Deutscher Aktienindex'' (German stock index); ) is a stock market index consisting of the 40 major German blue chip companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It is a total return index. Prices are taken from the Xetra t ...

list of 30 top companies. In 2006 Altana AG sold its pharmaceutical activities to

Nycomed Nycomed is a Swiss pharmaceutical company. Nycomed was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals in September 2011. Production was located in Norway, Denmark, Poland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, India, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Head office ...

for €4.5 billion, leaving only its

speciality chemicals Specialty chemicals (also called specialties or effect chemicals) are particular chemical products that provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agri ...

business. The €4.5 billion was distributed to shareholders as a dividend. Altana maintained its stock exchange listing and Klatten remained its majority shareholder. In 2009, she bought almost all shares she did not already own in Altana. Altana and SKion, which are both wholly owned by Susanne Klatten, are shareholder of Landa Digital Printing with together 46% since 2018. Landa Digital Printing is a company of the Israeli entrepreneur and inventor Benny Landa in the field of digital printing and nanotechnology. Her father also left her a 12.50% stake in

BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...

, which increased to 19.2% following the death of her mother in 2015. She was appointed to the supervisory board of BMW with her brother

Stefan Quandt Stefan Quandt (born 9 May 1966) is a German billionaire heir, engineer and industrialist. As of December 2024, ''Forbes'' estimated his net worth at US$21.6 billion, ranked at number 89 on Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Early life Quandt was bor ...

in 1997. German graphite maker

SGL Carbon SGL Carbon SE is a European company based in Germany. It is one of the world's leading manufacturers of products from carbon. With 29 production sites around the globe (17 in Europe, 8 in North America and 4 in Asia), and a service network in mor ...

said on 16 March 2009 that Klatten owns options to raise her stake in SGL from 8% to almost a quarter of the shares but no more than that.

Quandt family activities during WWII

The

Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award The Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award is a German award for excellence in journalism. It was first awarded in 1995. The award is named for the German journalist Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Hanns Joachim "Hajo" Friedrichs (15 March 1927 – 28 March ...

winning documentary film ''The Silence of the Quandts'' by the German public broadcaster ARD described in October 2007 the role of the Quandt family businesses during the Second World War. The family's Nazi past was not well known, but the documentary film revealed this to a wide audience and confronted the Quandts about the use of slave labourers in the family's factories during World War II. As a result, five days after the showing, four family members announced, on behalf of the entire Quandt family, their intention to fund a research project in which a historian would examine the family's activities during

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

's dictatorship. The independent 1,200-page study researched and compiled by Bonn historian, Joachim Scholtyseck, that was released in 2011 concluded: "The Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis". , no compensation, apology or even memorial at the site of one of their factories, have been permitted. BMW was not implicated in the report.

Personal life

Police prevented an attempt to kidnap her and her mother Johanna Quandt in 1978. Susanne met Jan Klatten while she was doing an internship with BMW in

Regensburg Regensburg (historically known in English as Ratisbon) is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the rivers Danube, Naab and Regen (river), Regen, Danube's northernmost point. It is the capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the ...

, where he worked as an engineer. It is reported that during this time, she called herself Kant and did not tell him who she was until they were sure about each other, but Klatten himself denies the story. They married in 1990 in

Kitzbühel Kitzbühel (, also: ; ) is a town rights, medieval town situated in the Kitzbühel Alps along the river Kitzbüheler Ache in Tyrol (state), Tyrol, Austria, about east of the state capital Innsbruck and is the administrative centre of the Kitzbüh ...

and live in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. They have three children. The couple separated in 2018. She has been a member of the University Council of the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

since 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the ''Bayerischer Verdienstorden'', the

Bavarian Order of Merit The Bavarian Order of Merit () is the Order of Merit of the Free State of Bavaria. It is awarded by the Minister-President of Bavaria as a "recognition of outstanding contributions to the Free State of Bavaria and the Bavarian people". The or ...

. She is one of the biggest donors of the

centre-right Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing politics, right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalis ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

, the Christian Democratic Union. In 2007, Klatten was blackmailed by Helg "Russak" Sgarbi, a 44-year-old Swiss national who threatened to release reported evidence depicting the two having an affair. Sgarbi, who was charged with similar blackmail schemes against multiple women, was arrested in January 2009 and brought to court in Germany, where he was sentenced to six years in jail. His accomplice, Italian hotel owner Ernano Barretta, had allegedly filmed Sgarbi and Klatten with hidden cameras. Barretta was also arrested and was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2012.

References

External links

Biography and news
by Beth Shaw, rightpundits.com, 9 March 2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:Klatten, Susanne 1962 births Living people People from Bad Homburg vor der Höhe German people of Dutch descent Alumni of the University of Buckingham Female billionaires German billionaires Businesspeople from Hesse 20th-century German businesswomen 20th-century German businesspeople

Susanne Susanne may refer to: *Susanne (given name), a feminine given name (including a list of people with the name) *, later USS ''SP-411'', a United States Navy patrol boat in commission from 1917 to 1919 *, the proposed name and designation for a vess ...