Susanne Klatten, a German heiress and BMW shareholder, is ranked No. 79 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, tied with Vladimir Potanin, with a net worth of $29.7 billion. She is the wealthiest woman in Germany, according to Wikipedia.
Susanne Hanna Ursula Klatten (née Quandt) was born on April 28, 1962, in Bad Homburg, West Germany, the daughter of Herbert and Johanna Quandt. She earned a degree in business finance, worked for the Frankfurt office of the advertising agency Young & Rubicam from 1981 to 1983, and took a marketing and management course at the University of Buckingham and an MBA at IMD Business School in Lausanne.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 79 (tied with Vladimir Potanin), with $29.7 billion
- Earlier estimate: Bloomberg estimated $23.4 billion in January 2022, when she was 50th in the world
Altana and BMW
- Altana: on her father’s death she inherited his 50.1% stake in the pharmaceutical and chemicals maker; in 2006 Altana sold its pharma business to Nycomed for €4.5 billion, which was paid out to shareholders, and in 2009 she bought nearly all the shares she did not own
- BMW: she inherited 12.5%, which rose to 19.2% after her mother’s death in 2015; she joined BMW’s supervisory board in 1997 with her brother Stefan Quandt
- Digital printing: since 2018 Altana and her investment company SKion have together held 46% of Landa Digital Printing, founded by the Israeli inventor Benny Landa
The 2007 Blackmail Case
In 2007 Klatten was blackmailed by Helg Sgarbi, a Swiss man who threatened to release evidence of an alleged affair between them. He was charged with similar schemes against several women, was arrested in January 2009 and was sentenced to six years in prison in Germany.
Honours
She is an honorary senator of the Technical University of Munich (2004) and received an honorary degree from the University of Buckingham in 2022.
Why It Matters
Klatten’s wealth rests on the Quandt family’s long-term holdings in BMW and Altana, making her one of the richest women in Europe.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: The BMW Welt in Munich (file photo, 2013; Susanne Klatten is not pictured). Photo: Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
