Interesting Story of a New Billionaire

Found a great article from a few months back on Forbes about a German man who recently became a billionaire after turning around the engineering company that his father worked for when he was growing up.

Check Out The Article
Wolfgang Leitner was the son of a machine fitter in germany that wanted to do bigger and better things with his life so he went to school to get a doctorate in chemistry. After school  he ended up as a consultant working for McKinsey. While there he got the chance to work on the project of fixing his fathers employer Andritz AG that had fallen on hard times and needed restructuring. A few years after the project started he took a job at the company. In his career he has done a lot to transform the company and build it in to one of Europe's largest engineering companies.

 "Leitner has spent the past 25 years helping to boost sales to $5.9 billion, up from $194 million, and propelled profits  from $1.2 million to nearly $300 million."

 From humble beginnings to graduate degrees to turning around a troubled company and building it up into a multi-billion dollar company. It points to the fact that hard work and good strategy can build a company to incredible heights. And also that you don't have to start the next facebook to do it you can turn a regular company into something massive or turn a struggling company into a sprinter. the article is a good read.


Also check out an unrelated but interesting book:

Billion Dollar Turnaround: The 3M Spinoff that became Imation