Merckle is chairman of VEM Vermoegensverwaltung, a German investment company inherited from his father. The Zossen-based business owns 44 percent of Phoenix Pharmahandel, a closely held pharmaceutical wholesaler. He owns 25 percent of HeidelbergCement, which had revenue of 18.1 billion euros ($21.3 billion) in 2018.
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The majority of Merckle's fortune is derived from his 26.7 percent stake in HeidelbergCement. He owns shares in the Heidelberg, Germany-based manufacturer through PH Vermoegensverwaltung, according to its 2018 annual report.
He also owns Phoenix Pharmahandel, a closely held pharmaceutical wholesaler based in Mannheim, Germany. The company had revenue of 25.8 billion euros ($30.5 billion) in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, and is valued using the average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiple of three publicly traded peer companies: UDG Healthcare, McKesson Europe and Cardinal Health. The billionaire is credited with 44 percent of the company based on a historical analysis of company filings.
Ludwig Merckle was born on June 8, 1965, to Ruth and Adolf Merckle. He studied economics and computer science at the University of Mannheim and, in 1997, joined the family business that was started by his great-grandfather in 1881 as a chemicals wholesaler in southeastern Germany's Sudetenland.
After World War II, the family fled Sudetenland, a region near the Czech and Austrian borders, and moved to Blaubeuren in the mountains of southern West Germany. The Merckles formed a new company and expanded it from wholesale chemicals to pharmaceutical production. Adolf took over the family business in 1967. During the next four decades, he further expanded operations to include cement, building materials, all-terrain vehicles, metal works and textiles.
Merckle built a majority stake in publicly traded HeidelbergCement and, in late 2008, helped fund the company's planned acquisition of British cementmaker, Hanson, using a $1 billion bank loan backed by Heidelberg shares and held by the family's main investment company, VEM Vermoegensverwaltung. The deal followed a "low three-digit million euros" short bet against Volkswagen shares that VEM had entered earlier in the year, according to a person close to the family who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
The two moves faltered at the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis when, in October, VW shares rose fourfold after Porsche announced it was increasing its stake in the carmaker to 75 percent and, a month later, Heidelberg shares fell the most in 19 years, leading banks to call in the loan backed by Heidelberg shares.
VEM was forced to negotiate a $1.4 billion refinancing package in January 2009, two days after Adolf committed suicide, leaving his oldest son, Ludwig, to resolve the crisis. The billionaire structured a loan package with a group of about 40 banks that included Commerzbank, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Deutsche Bank and HVB Group, and also sold some of the family's most valuable assets, including generic medicine manufacturer maker Ratiopharm and more than half of its stake in HeidelbergCement.
Merckle lives in Blaubeuren with his wife and two children.