Adolf Merckle

Adolf Merckle (18 Mar., 1934 in Dresden) is a German lawyer, investor, entrepreneur and billionaire.  He is a businessman and one of the richest people in Germany. Although most of his wealth comes from inheritance, Adolf developed his grandfather’s chemical wholesale company, Phoenix Pharmahandel, into Germany’s largest pharmaceutical wholesaler. 

He has four children: Louis, Philip, Jane and Tobias Merckle.

Merckle founded 1974 The company Ratiopharm to inexpensive generic drugs to produce. He has an extensive network of companies, in addition to the Ratiopharm group of pharmaceutical wholesale trade PHOENIX Pharma AG & Co KG, Kässbohrer terrain vehicle and on the holding company Spohn Cement also HeidelbergCement AG belong. According to Forbes list, he is with a fortune of around 12.8 billion U.S. dollars (March 2008) of the fourth man in Germany.

Key points of his companies are using people from his family occupied. Despite the handover of the business to his son Ludwig Merckle in 1997, Adolf Merckle remains active in the background. Merckle is a member of the Tübingen students connect AV hedgehog.

Adolf Merckle was in October 2005 by the Baden-Wurttemberg Prime Minister Guenther Oettinger with the Federal Cross of Merit First Classaward. Since 2004, Merckle makers of the Saxon Order of Merit, as he was by the universities of Ulm and Tuebingen with the honorary doctorate is excellent and whose honorary senator.