Hidden Billionaire
Including almost $1 billion in dividends he has collected since 2008, Orenstein has a fortune valued at least $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“As a privately-owned company, we do not disclose personal financial data of shareholders,” Victoria Frost, a spokeswoman for Supreme, said in an e-mail.
A U.S. citizen, Orenstein was born in Frankfurt, where he still lives with his wife, Petra. His father, Alfred, was a soldier in the U.S. Navy and Army who settled in Germany following World War II. He left the service in 1957, and started supplying food to military bases across Europe.
Orenstein attended boarding school at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire, before enrolling at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He dropped out following the death of his father in July 1985.
“I took over as the only family member that was interested in the business,” he said. “It was a very difficult, very challenging first five years.”
The billionaire said he started looking for opportunities on other continents in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the outbreak of the Gulf War in Iraq spurred the Pentagon to reduce the number of U.S. soldiers based in Europe.
He enlisted the help of Gans, a childhood friend whom he’d met in kindergarten in Oberursel, Germany, to write proposals getting overseas business. Their first contract provided logistics services to the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Mozambique in 1993.
“My strength has always been the execution and procurement, and Michael’s strength is in writing,” said Orenstein. He made Gans a co-owner in 1993. “Our relationship is so strong that it initially was a handshake agreement.”
Gans, who is a citizen of Luxembourg and lives in Baech, Switzerland, received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a law degree from George Washington University in Washington. He races and collects vintage Bugatti cars, and owns multiple apartments on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to Acris, the city’s property records database.