Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr.

Heirs to the Aldi retail fortune, Beate Heister and Karl Albrecht Jr. are the children of Karl Albrecht Sr., who died in July 2014 at age 94. After World War II, Karl Sr. and his brother, Theo Sr., who died in 2010 at age 88, took over their family’s corner grocery store in Essen, Germany. Propagating the discount revolution in German retailing, they built their Aldi supermarket chain based on a low-price strategy similar to WalMart. In 1961, the brothers split ownership: Karl Sr. took the stores in southern Germany, plus rights to the Aldi brand in the U.K., Australia and the U.S. Theo Sr. got the stores in northern Germany and the rest of Europe. In 1971, he bought U.S. grocery chain Trader Joe’s.