Michael Otto

Otto was born in 1943 in Kulm as the son of Werner Otto. In 1945, he fled with his family to Hamburg, where his father founded a mail-order shoe business in 1949, which would later become Otto Group. After an apprenticeship in banking at Merck Finck & Co in Munich, he studied economics at the University of Hamburg and LMU Munich and obtained a doctorate.

In 1971, he became a member of the executive board responsible for textile purchasing in his father's company.

In February 1981, Otto became chairman of the executive board of the Otto Group. He remained in office until October 2007 and was chairman of the supervisory board until March 2025. During his tenure, the Otto Group developed from a catalogue mail-order company into a digital retail group. In 1986, he made environmental protection a corporate objective. Measures included changes towards more environmentally compatible production, waste separation and a shift from air freight to sea transport. The group also acquired various companies including Limango, Manufactum and SportScheck, and founded companies including About You and Bonprix.

The family members were the former owners of Spiegel, Inc. (the parent company of Eddie Bauer and former owners of Spiegel catalog), which filed for bankruptcy on 17 March 2003. On 25 May 2005, Spiegel, Inc. emerged from bankruptcy, was renamed Eddie Bauer Holdings, and is now owned primarily by Commerzbank. The Otto Group no longer has any stake in the company.

Until April 2014, Otto was a member of the supervisory board of Axel Springer SE. He was also a partner in Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG until April 2016, which holds 93% of the voting rights in Robert Bosch GmbH. Otto is also a member of Deloitte's advisory board.

In 2011, Otto was criticised over wage dumping and precarious working conditions among parcel couriers at the group-owned subsidiary Hermes Europe. In August 2011, ARD broadcast the report Das Hermes-Prinzip: Ein Milliardär und seine Götterboten on the subject. Michael Otto and Hermes denied the existence of precarious working conditions, attributing problems to individual subcontractors. In September 2011, Hermes announced that it had ended cooperation with several subcontractors and that the Otto Group's ethical standards would in the future apply to companies and suppliers working on Otto's behalf.

The wealth of the Otto family was listed under Michael Otto's name on the Forbes 2015 billionaires list at US$15.4 billion. The family ranked 51st worldwide and seventh among German billionaires.

In April 2015, Otto announced that he would transfer his majority stake in the Otto Group, and thus much of his wealth, to a new charitable foundation. Its annual distributions were intended to support cultural, social, environmental and charitable projects while ensuring the Otto family's long-term influence over the group.

On 1 March 2025, he handed over the chairmanship of the supervisory board to his former chief executive Alexander Birken. Since 2025, he has been honorary chairman of the supervisory board.

Otto is married to Christl Otto and is the father of Janina (born 1973) and Benjamin Otto (born 1975) and lives in Hamburg, Germany.