It’s the stuff authors and lawyers can only dream about –
the clash of the billionaire widows.
Ingrid Flick, the widow of one of the members of the Flick family, a wealthy German industrial and political dynasty. The family
owns an industrial empire that formerly embraced holdings in companies involved
in coal, steel and a minority holding in Daimler AG. The Flick family is one of
the richest industrial families worldwide.
The widow Flick wants to move the coastal road of Lake Wörth (located in Austria) at her expense, so it would not cut across her
estate and therefore allow her more privacy.
Her neighbors are ticked off, including fellow billionairess
Heidi Horten, who inherited an estimated $1 billion fortune upon the death of
her husband, a German entrepreneur who founded and owned Horten AG (the
fourth-largest chain of department stores in Germany).
According to ORF, Ms. Flick would be willing to spend 4m
Euro for labor as well as a purchase price of 1.5m Euro to purchase the
abandoned track, which would be a nice additional to her current real estate.
The local authorities are in favor of the
purchase; it would solve the problem of the current traffic jams.
According to
Mr. Gerhard Dörfler, the sale of the around 900 meters road would be invested
in infrastructure. He stated that this is an "amazingly positive
story" and a "true windfall". The new infrastructure would
enable public access to the lake.
However, local residents are not that excited,
and protested publicly. At least 100 people demonstrated with signs stating: "Stop
the coastal theft" and "We own the lake".
A representative of Ingrid Flick stated that "Any
new infrastructure will only endanger the drivers, and all it does is granting
the Flick family more privacy.”
Due to the very public battle of the billionaire
widows, local authorities are currently taking a more prudent approach.
How will it end? Only time and political cloud
will tell....stay tuned!
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