Otto Group Chairman

Hamburg, Germany

Michael Otto’s Otto Group owns home furnishings chain Crate & Barrel. Michael’s father, Werner, founded the company in 1949 and built it into one of the world’s largest mail order companies.

Werner began significant investment in U.S. real estate in 1973, when he founded Paramount Group, which began acquiring Class-A office space in Manhattan, starting with 1633 Broadway. In 2014, Paramount Group brought in about $2B in what was at the time the second-largest IPO of a real estate company in the U.S. — Scott Klocksin