Bestseller CEO’s Klarna stake drives $1.7 billion investment comeback

Anders Holch Povlsen has accumulated stakes in listed online retailers, banks, and other finance firms over the past two decades, while overseeing one of the world’s largest closely held fashion fortunes.

But it’s a lucrative bet on Klarna Group Plc that’s currently driving the 52-year-old billionaire’s wealth revamp.

Povlsen, chief executive officer of Danish clothing retailer Bestseller, is among the biggest winners from the initial public offering of the financial technology company, which began trading Wednesday in New York and closed almost 15% above its offering price of $40 per share.

He now owns a roughly $1.4 billion stake in the Swedish business, making it his largest holding in a publicly traded company, while also cashing in at least $250 million from the offering, which priced above the marketed ranges, according to Bloomberg calculations. Povlsen has overall gains of more than 600% from his investment in the provider of buy-now, pay-later financing, taking the value of his disclosed holdings in listed companies to about $2.5 billion, the calculations show.

A representative for Povlsen — who has a total net worth of $6.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Despite Klarna’s current valuation falling well below its 2021 peak of $45.6 billion, Povlsen’s investment underscores one of his most successful efforts to diversify a family fortune that began five decades ago, when his parents founded Bestseller as a women’s clothing store in a small Danish town.

Povlsen acquired a 10% stake in Klarna in mid-2017 through his family office, Heartland, just weeks before the fintech was valued at approximately $2.3 billion. He earlier used the investment firm to acquire holdings in e-commerce fashion sites Zalando SE and ASOS Plc. Heartland’s other listed assets include Funding Circle Holdings Plc, a London-based lending platform that has struggled since its initial public offering in 2018.

While also a major landowner in Scotland, most of Povlsen’s fortune remains tied up in Bestseller, where he first began working as a teenager before taking over from his parents as owner and managing director in 2001.

In a rare interview this year to mark Bestseller’s 50th anniversary, Povlsen said he originally wanted to start an e-commerce firm before deciding to work in the family business, underscoring his long-standing interest in the sector that Klarna has helped transform since its own creation in 2005.

“My parents did everything they could to dissuade me from following in their footsteps,” he told the Spin Off fashion magazine. “The more they tried, the more my interest in Bestseller grew.”

Other winners in Klarna’s IPO include the founders Victor Jacobsson, Niklas Adalberth, and Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who’s also its CEO. They cashed in at least $50 million of their combined holdings in the oversubscribed IPO, which valued the company at approximately $15 billion, according to filings.

The three now control overall stakes worth more than $2 billion in Klarna, a company that has evolved from a European clone of PayPal Holdings Inc. to one of the world’s biggest providers of short-term consumer loans as it seeks to disrupt the banking sector.

“You have to be willing to push the envelope,” Siemiatkowski said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg News.