Founder of Inditex looking to invest in Paris

Amancio Ortega, the third richest man in the world, coming in just after Bill Gates and Carlos Slim according to

Forbes magazine, is reportedly preparing to purchase twenty properties in the French capital.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, Ortega has made an inviting offer to Italian property company Risanamento to purchase the buildings for commercial use, offering 1.200 million euros for properties that total 70,000 square meters and generate an estimated 40 million euros per year.

However it seems to be that the founder of Inditex is not the only one interested in purchasing the Parisian properties. Qatar Holding made an offer for the same properties a few months earlier, although its offer is thought to be an estimated one million euros less than Ortega's offer.

Two properties from the twenty which Ortega wishes to obtain stand out from the rest. One is a boutique from French designer Barbara Bui, located on the Avenue Montaigne and the other is the current headquarters of liquor company Cointreau Rémy attached to a Orange store on Boulevard Haussmann.

Currently the majority of locations, from which Inditex operates its businesses from, are owned by the company, with a number of its properties being rented out to other fashion retailers such as H&M in the Portal del Ángel store in Barcelona. Ortega's real estate holdings were valued at 2.875 million euros at the end of 2012, according to independent estimates from outside the company.