Inditex is news this Wednesday. The textile giant has submitted results, a record and exceeds the forecasts: invoices 7.5% more and earns 5,866 million. But it has stopped its growth and the bag has opened punishing the value with dazeline greater than 7%. On the other side of the story, we enter the exclusive club of the great heritage, where the fortunes are handled with the coldness of a Crupier in a Casino de Montecarlo, the war is not fought with gunpowder or swords, but with demands, signatures and guarantees that appear or disappear according to the wind that springs in the lawsuits of the lawyers. TO Sandra OrtegaAmancio’s other daughter, the discreet, who does not poses with Karl Lagerfeld or plays royalty in the parades of Paris, have tried to drag her into the mud with the same tool with which the empires are built: money.
The bank thought it had an easy prey. Comfort Letters, that invention of financial engineering that serves to tie loose ends without making noise, They attributed the guarantee of a millionaire debt of Room MateKike Sarasola’s hotel chain, shipwrecked after the pandemic tsunami. The argument seemed infallible: If Inditex’s heiress had endorsed, I had to pay. But in the script there was an unexpected turn.
A Court of Madrid has issued that Sandra Ortega never gave her consent to sign that commitment. And if there is no consent, there is no debt. First battle won.
A discreet empire
In Spain of the paper paper, where her sister Marta Reina as the great ambassador of the textile emporium, Sandra Ortega has cultivated a silent businesswoman profilemore attentive to investments than to the covers. Rosp Corunna, the family office he inherited from his mother, Rosalía Mera, is his trench, from where he handles his fortune with a strategy that mixes biotechnology, renewable and well chosen brick. If Marta Ortega is Inditex’s face, Sandra is the invisible hand of a more vast and less colorful empire.
When Room Mate collapsed, the banks rushed to recover their money. The crisis had turned the hotel into a castle of cards and someone had to take care of the losses. Among the documents that were wielded in the courts, there were guarantees that, according to the heiress, did not carry their consent. His former trusted man, José Leyte, was in the center of the storm: for two decades he had administered his finances with the same ease with which a butler organizes the agenda of his lord. Until the Lord stopped trusting the butler.
THE DUEL WITH LEYTE AND THE REVANCH OF THE BANK
History is a financial thriller with all its ingredients: millions at stake, a firm that appears on the wrong site and a professional relationship that went from respect for litigation. Ortega denounced Leyte for falsifying his rubric in the guarantees of Room Matebut justice filed the criminal case in 2022. The bank saw its opportunity there: if there was no falsification, then the guarantees were valid.
EBN Business Bank was the first to move. He claimed a million and a half of euros to the heiress and took her to court. But the play has gone wrong. The Court of First Instance number 46 of Madrid has failed against the Bank: Sandra Ortega did not sign anything, did not authorize anything and, therefore, do not have to pay. The sentence, however, is not firm. The bank can still resort.
And is not the only one with pending accounts. Deutsche Bank, Banca March, Société Générale, Bankinter and Abanca have also filed demands for the same matter. In total, The bill that the bank tries to endorse it amounts to 150 million euros.
The other legacy of Rosalía Mera
While the last name Ortega is still stamped on the labels of Zara and Massimo Dutti, Sandra Ortega protects the other great legacy of the family: the financial prudence of Rosalía Mera. His mother, co -founder of Inditex and deceased in 2013, raised Rosp Corunna with the same vision with which he turned a humble battery factory into the largest textile empire on the planet. And his daughter has followed the path without departing from the script.
Its investment strategy has always been the one who prefers a well walled castle to a glass float. There are no grandiloquent exhibitions, no parties in Marbella, or dinners with designers. In your world, The figures speak quietly and the fortunes are consolidated without fuss.
But discretion does not prevent struggle. Sandra Ortega has been found in the middle of a war that she did not look for, with the bank shooting from all fronts and A former man who became his opponent. At the moment, in this game of financial chess, she has moved the first piece successful.
A Bank Lesson
The sentence against EBN is not just a personal victory for Ortega; It is a reminder that in the world of large capital not everything is solved with a seal and a firm. The bank has bet strongly, confident that the last name Ortega would pay without grinding, but the judge’s ruling has questioned the entire strategy.
The opinion is clear: if a signature is not recognized before a notary, if there is no consent evidence, the contract does not exist. And without contract, there is no debta.
This is how Sandra Ortega has pointed her first great victory in this litigation. Without high statements, without press conferences or effect blows. Only with the weight of the law and the coldness of those who know that, on the business board, the best play is the one that is not seen coming.
Now, the bank has the ball on its roof. It can resort, insist and continue pushing. But he doesn’t face a quiet and conformist heiress. He faces a businesswoman who knows how to defend her territory. And that, when he plays, he also knows how to fight.
