23 Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr.
- Heirs to the Aldi retail fortune, Beate Heister and Karl Albrecht Jr. are the children of Karl Albrecht Sr., who died in July 2014 at age 94.
- After World War II, Karl Sr. and his brother, Theo Sr., who died in 2010 at age 88, took over their family’s corner grocery store in Essen, Germany.
- Propagating the discount revolution in German retailing, they built their Aldi supermarket chain based on a low-price strategy similar to Wal-Mart.
- In 1961, the brothers split ownership: Karl Sr. took the stores in southern Germany, plus rights to the Aldi brand in the U.K., Australia and the U.S.
However, he is ranked as the 20th-richest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of $36.1 billion.