Lars Windhorst net worth

Short introduction

Lars Windhorst is an entrepreneur from Germany and one of the founders of the Sapinda Group. In 2015, the net wealth was estimated at £ 320 million. He founded his first teen company and submitted bankruptcy in 2003 as a result of dot-com bubbles. The following year, Windhorst set up the Sapinda Group. After the restructuring, Sapinda Holding BV, founded in 2009, is a parent company from the group. Windhorst is his non-executive chairman.

In December 2007, shortly after Christmas, Windhorst was seriously injured in a plane crash at Kazakhstan. One pilot died when Challenger Bombardier 604 crashed into a wall, out of the runway in Almaty and exploded.

Early life

At the age of 14, Windhorst, the son of a local stationery dealer, changed the family garage in his hometown of Rahden into an emergency computer laboratory. He mobilized his classmates to help him build a PC then he sold at his father’s shop while looking for individual component suppliers in China.

He founded his first company in school in 1993. Because he was underage, his parents helped him manage his operation by signing a contract on his name and made him work. Windhorst is known as one of the most successful young entrepreneurs in Germany. As a child whose miracle, he and Bill Gates were invited to travel to Asia with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as part of the official government delegation. On this trip, Windhorst made international business contacts.

Career

In October 1993, Windhorst established his first company, Chinese businessman Ming Rong Zhang, Windhorst Electronics GmbH. Windhorst Electronics GmbH activities initially concentrated on the import and trade of electronic components and computer components from Asia and the sale of IT products throughout Germany and Europe. Only one year after the company was established, Windhorst’s electronics reached 80 million euros with a total of 80 employees.

In 1995, Windhorst moved to Hong Kong and established a company to operate groups in Asia. The Windhorst Group expanded its business as a trading and investment company in the field of Electronics, Industry, Trade, Real Estate and Finance until 1996. The company has offices and offices in Europe and Asia, including mainland China and Vietnam.

In 2000, Windhorst founded Windhorst New Technologies AG with a focus on investing in the field of internet and new technology. In 2002, WindhorST AG’s new technology would be registered with Frankfurt Stock Exchange. With the outbreak of the economic crisis, the group had difficulty and had to submit bankruptcy in 2003.

In 2004, Lars Windhorst together established the investment group Sapinda, which coordinated financing with its subsidiary Anoa Capital to fund public, private and start-up companies. In about five years, Sapinda has invested more than 2 billion euros. During the global financial crisis, the group and especially German Vatas holding GMBH suffered significant losses. As a result of the global financial crisis in 2008, the company began restructuring talks in the second half of this year. In January 2009, partners must submit bankruptcy with their German subsidiary, Vatas.

In April 2009 all restructured business activities and Sapinda Holding BV were established from the new group of groups. The group now has offices in several countries and employs a team of more than 80 people worldwide. Sapinda Holding BV combines investment in agriculture and food processing, mining / raw materials, oil and gas production and invests in public and private companies. It also has investments in technology, media and real estate. In February 2018, Sapinda acquired La Perla’s luxury brand.

Career highlights

Lars Windhorst founded Agret Agri with Carl Heinrich Bruhn to allow Sapinda to hold BV to be involved in the African Agriculture sector, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel. Windhorst said in an interview that the Sapinda business held an investment of around EUR 3.5 billion between 2009 and 2012, including loans for companies such as Air Berlin and Infineon. Mitra Sapinda, including Roland Berger, a management consultant whose counselor was led by Hubertus Von Grünberg, who is also the Chair of the Swiss Group Abb Ltd.

Windhorst filed bankruptcy in the summer of 2007. According to an article in the German News Magazine Focus on September 3, 2007, a lawsuit submitted by a common creditor, Ulrich Marseille was rejected by the Federal Court in August. Which means that Windhorst’s debt has been paid.

In 2009, the General Prosecutor Berlin was charged with fraud, violations of trust, embezzlement and several bankruptcy crimes. Windhorst’s trust violations include transfers of EUR 800,000 to one of its alternative accounts. The prosecutor agreed to impose allegations of fraud if he fined € 1 million, replacing his suspicion of his victim, and acknowledged the affair after settlement of the appeal. In the process beginning on December 18, 2009, the trial was stopped and the amount was repaid.