11 Biggest Private Companies in the World

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3. Lidl

Revenue: $71.88 billion

When Josef Schwarz was choosing a name for his new chain of supermarkets, he encountered a linguistic problem. If he named it after himself, like he wanted, it would be called Schwarz market, or in German, the black market. That wouldn’t do, so instead, he bought naming rights from his former partner, Ludwig Lidl, for a sum of 1,000 German Marks. I wonder how Ludwig’s heirs feel when they see one of 9800 supermarkets worldwide that bear their name.

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