What is Rolf Gerling's Net Worth?
Rolf Gerling is a German-born businessman who has a net worth of $1.8 billion dollars. Rolf Gerling was born on December 15, 1954 in Cologne, Germany. He amassed his initial wealth through his inheritance. In 1904, Rolf Gerling's grandfather launched a small insurance business, Gerling Konzern, which his father Hans grew into a global insurance group which became one of the world's largest writers of reinsurance policies.
In 1991, following the death of his father, Rolf Gerling took over the company. Trained as an economist, he showed little interest in his legacy and in 2005 Gerling sold his 94% stake in the company to Talanx Group, Germany's third largest insurance company, for an estimated $1.6 billion. Gerling, a passionate environmentalist who lives in Switzerland, helped establish the Gerling Academy for Risk Research, a think tank set up to study the industrial world's impact on the environment. In the '90s, he was instrumental in persuading 50 insurance companies to sign a United Nations pledge to consider the issues of climate change and other environmental problems in their business practices.