Fifty years ago, BMW was an ailing company and Herbert Quandt was about to sell his 30% stake to Daimler-Benz. At the last moment he decided to keep it and actually increased his holding to 50%. A year later, in 1962, the company's fortunes were transformed with the new BMW 1500 series which established a new segment in the car market: the quality production saloon. Quandt, who was a powerful industrialist in Germany, ran the Quandt group with 200 businesses. He married his third wife Johanna in 1960. When Herbert Quandt died in 1982, his stake in BMW passed to Johanna and their two children, Stefan and Susanne. The family stake in BMW is worth nearly £15.7 billion. The three Quandts live quietly near Frankfurt. Stefan has interests in other German companies inherited from his father. Susanne inherited a 50.1% stake in a pharmaceutical and chemical company called Atlana. In 2006, it sold off its pharma division and she received about £1.8 billion. Last year she took over the 50% she did not own and the company was valued at around £1.1 billion. The family, led by Johanna, 85, is worth $12.1 billion as of August 2015 according to Forbes.