Dieter Schwarz

Dieter Schwarz
Born	24 9 1939 (age 87 years old (as of 2026) )
Occupation	businessman
Known for	Founder of the Lidl discount chain; owner of the Schwarz Group

German retail businessman; owner of the Schwarz Group (Lidl and Kaufland)

Dieter Schwarz (born 24 September 1939) is a German businessman who controls the Schwarz Group, owner of the Lidl and Kaufland chains, which Forbes describes as Europe's largest retail empire. The group is formally owned by a foundation structure, but Forbes says Schwarz keeps full control.^[1] On 20 October 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Dieter Schwarz 32nd in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$59.31 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as Retail.^[1]^[2] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Dieter Schwarz 29th, at US$67.2 billion.^[3]

Early life and family

Forbes reports that Schwarz inherited the business from his father, Josef Schwarz, who became a partner in the Heilbronn fruit wholesaler Südfrüchte Großhandel Lidl & Co. in 1930. It describes him as a very private person who avoids publicity, and says he has been married for more than 50 years and has two daughters.^[1] Lidl's company history dates the business to the 1930 merger in Heilbronn of A. Lidl & Comp. with Josef Schwarz's grocery wholesaler, forming Lidl & Schwarz KG.^[4]

Business career

Lidl's first store opened in 1973 in Ludwigshafen-Mundenheim, and stores in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Kornwestheim followed that year. The chain expanded across Germany from 1984, opened its first store outside Germany in Sarreguemines, France, in 1989, and opened its 1,000th store in 1992.^[4] Handelsblatt reported in 2023, on the chain's 50th anniversary, that Schwarz had considered calling it "Schwarzmarkt" and instead bought the rights to the Lidl name from a retired teacher, Ludwig Lidl, for 1,000 Deutschmarks. The paper said that Schwarz copied the Aldi model at first but went on to develop his own ideas.^[5] Forbes reports that Schwarz became chief executive when his father died in 1977. It says the group now has about 500,000 employees and revenue of more than US$200 billion, and that Lidl entered the United States in 2017, with most of its US stores in Virginia and North and South Carolina.^[1]

In recent years the group has expanded into information technology and cyber-security. In 2021 the Schwarz Group took a majority stake in the cyber-security company XM Cyber, a deal TechCrunch valued at US$700 million.^[6]^[7] Its IT arm, Schwarz Digits, announced in May 2025 that it was expanding its STACKIT cloud into a "German hyperscaler", in partnership with companies including the AI developer Aleph Alpha.^[8]

Wealth

Forbes gives the source of his wealth as retail and puts the Schwarz Group's revenue at more than US$200 billion.^[1]

Wealth history

Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 14 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2013. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list.^[3]^[1]

Forbes estimates by list year
Year	World's Billionaires rank	Net worth (US$ bn)
2013	29	19.5
2014	29	21.1
2015	46	19.4
2016	47	16.4
2017	53	17.0
2018	46	20.9
2019	36	22.6
2020	40	19.8
2021	38	36.9
2022	28	47.1
2023	27	42.9
2024	37	38.0
2025	37	41.0
2026	29	67.2

Philanthropy

The Dieter Schwarz Stiftung says it supports education, research and entrepreneurship, chiefly through the Bildungscampus and the experimenta science centre in Heilbronn and the IPAI artificial-intelligence project. It quotes Schwarz as saying, "Bildung ist unser wichtigster Rohstoff" ("education is our most important raw material").^[9] A subsidiary of the foundation, TUM Campus Heilbronn gGmbH, was founded in 2018 to support the Technical University of Munich's campus in Heilbronn.^[10] On 21 October 2025 Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Baden-Württemberg's Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann attended the ground-breaking for the IPAI campus, a 30-hectare AI site that the foundation says will have space for more than 5,000 people.^[11] Forbes says the foundation also supports children's daycare and science projects.^[1]

Political activity

No party donations by Schwarz personally were found in the sources checked. The group's commercial relationships with the German state include a strategic cooperation, announced in March 2025, between the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and STACKIT to develop sovereign cloud services that the federal administration could use.^[12] German federal ministers attended both the 2025 STACKIT announcement and the IPAI ground-breaking.^[8]^[11]

Controversies and legal issues

No legal proceedings against Schwarz personally were found in the sources checked.

International and political links

This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."

Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)

In May 2018 Globes reported that Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn (ZFHN), which it described as the family office fund of Dieter Schwarz, planned to invest millions of dollars in Israeli technology companies. It said the fund's chief executive had met investors such as Check Point co-founder Marius Nacht and the Recanati family, as well as the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Technion.^[13] In 2021 the Schwarz Group bought a majority stake in XM Cyber, which TechCrunch described as an Israeli security start-up.^[7]^[6] No donations by Schwarz to Israeli or pro-Israel organisations were found.