Roberto Cibeira Moreiras

Decades after founding Zara, pioneering fast fashion and becoming one of the world’s richest men, Amancio Ortega is pouring billions into commercial real estate, with Roberto Cibeira Moreiras leading the acquisition spree.

As institutional investors have pulled back amid elevated interest rates, Ortega’s family office, Pontegadea, has stepped up buying activity. Its strategy is straightforward: Pursue trophy assets, pay premium prices in cash, and hold them for the long term. The quick deployment of cash is designed, some observers have speculated, to reduce Ortega’s exposure to wealth taxes in his native Spain.

The firm, led by CEO Cibeiria Moreiras, uses dividends from Ortega’s 60 percent stake in Zara’s parent company, Inditex, to fund its purchases. Earlier this year, Inditex awarded Ortega $3.7 billion, the largest dividend the billionaire has ever received. 

Just in July, Pontegadea dropped $912 million to buy an office complex in the heart of Paris — marking Europe’s largest office sale since 2022. In 2025, the firm dropped $780 million for the Post, a two-tower complex in Vancouver, British Columbia, leased to Amazon in one of Canada’s largest real estate transactions. 

In Miami, Pontegadea paid $275 million for another office tower, the city’s most expensive office transaction in 2025. The acquisition, however, still fell short of Pontegadea’s $500 million purchase of the nearby 55-story Southeast Financial Center in 2016, which remains the most expensive office sale in Miami’s history.

More is in store. In Chicago, Pontegadea is negotiating to purchase Donald Bren’s 1 North Wacker Drive for a sum likely north of $500 million, which could become the city’s most expensive office sale since the pandemic. 

Pontegadea’s portfolio extends well beyond offices. Last year, it paid $165 million for a luxury rental in Fort Lauderdale in one of South Florida’s largest multifamily deals. In 2023, it dropped $232 million for a rental in Chicago, setting yet another record as the city’s biggest deal for a downtown apartment tower since the pandemic. 

Not to mention retail. Pontegadea owns sections of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road as well as a complex within the upscale Miami Design District. 

The family office is also betting on logistics, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying distribution centers across the globe. It bought a 49 percent stake in PD Ports, which operates 11 ports in the U.K., and formed a joint venture with Macquarie Asset Management to buy Qube Holdings, one of Australia’s largest logistics and infrastructure companies.