Lars Windhorst
About Lars Windhorst
Lars Windhorst is a popular German entrepreneur and famously founded his own international business at the age of 16.
Windhorst was born in Germany during 1976 and had a passion for computers and finance from an early age. His early business successes made him popular with the media and he was asked to accompany ex German Chancellor Helmet Kohl on state visits to parts of Asia.
During 1993, Windhorst became partners with Chinese businessman Ming Rong Zhang and together they founded Windhorst Electronics. The organization proved to be successful as Windhorst was able to deal directly with suppliers, assemble the parts in Germany and then ship the cheaper product to customers all over the globe. In Windhorst Electronics’ first year the company made 50 million US dollars in sales employing more than 80 staff members.
Over the years Lars Windhorst set up numerous other businesses and holding companies and the Windhorst group was soon dealing with all kinds of industries, including finance and real estate. However, Windhorst made investments in Internet companies and when there were problems with over-valuation of many of these online assets, one of Windhorst’s companies went bankrupt.
This was a big blow to Windhorst’s investments but a series of clever moves meant he was soon able to turn things back around and make back some of his fortune.
In 2004, Windhorst co-founded the investment company Sapinda with the backing of a well-known South African industrialist family. The company was doing extremely well and made a profit of more than two billion euros over five years. However, the financial crisis hit in 2008 which forced Windhorst to restructure his assets and set up a new holding company.
Lars Windhorst is now the CEO of one of Sapinda’s subsidiaries, Sapinda Deutschland GmbH.
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