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Who Are The Richest Men in Central America and Why: Their Philanthropy and Social Responsibility



Their private equity shop 3G Capital has a major stakes in ketchup company Heinz and fast food chain Burger King. The three billionaires are also controlling shareholders in beer-maker Anheuser-Bush InBev. Six of the top 25 richest Latin Americans, including the 3G investors, got the bulk of their fortunes from beer.


As is usual every year, Forbes magazine has released its list of richest people in the world, including that in the Caribbean and Central America. And while there are no Caribbean billionaires, there are several in Central America.




Who Are The Richest Men in Central America and Why



Thus, in its annual list of the richest men of Central America, Forbes Mexico this year only included one: Francis Durman Esquivel., president of Grupo Montecristo and Corporación Yanber, as well as general director of Aliaxis Latin America.


Although the Honduran Camilo Atala Faraj is an example of family fortune, in this case consolidated in the Financial Group Ficohsa, for Schmidt there is an argument to individualize its figure: he is the largest and most active of the members of this family of Arab origin, one of the richest in this Central American country.


The Honduran entered the Bloomberg Billionaires Index radar in 2015 thanks to the purchase of part of the assets of Citigroup Inc. in Nicaragua, an important addition to the Honduran operations of the same American bank acquired the previous year, which according to calculations by the Schmidt team, made him the richest banker in Central America, with a fortune estimated at US$1.4 billion.


In its June issue of 2020, Forbes magazine publishes a list of the richest entrepreneurs in Central America and the Dominican Republic (CARD). The select group is made up of 25 men and eight of them are Dominicans.


Forbes magazine released the list of the richest people in the world and Carlos Slim Helú , the owner of the América Móvil, Telmex and Grupo Carso telecommunications group, is once again present as the richest man in Latin America . According to the publication, the businessman has a fortune of $81.2 billion dollars and ranks thirteenth in the ranking that the publication makes each year.


According to the list, the second richest man in Latin America is Germán Larrea , owner of the Grupo México mining company, with a fortune of $30.8 billion and occupying position 45. Chilean Iris Fontbona and her family, owners of the consortium business Lukšić Group , ranks 67th with assets of $22.8 billion.


Like other Mesoamericans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans share a common pre-Columbian history, originating from the Lenca, Olmec, and Maya civilizations. These ancient indigenous cultures left behind an extensive legacy of art, architecture, and traditions, many of which are still present throughout Central America. Indigenous Central Americans first came into contact with Spanish explorers and colonists in the early 1500s and endured three centuries of colonial rule. In 1821, a united battle for independence led to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Central America. The republic dissolved in 1838, and the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were formed [1]. However, post-colonial independence brought instability, violence, and war, which persisted throughout the 20th century along with shifting civil and military governance, uneven economic development, and social unrest [1].


A.P. Giannini in 1904. Called "the handsomest man in North Beach," the 22-year old produce merchant married the daughter of the Beach's richest man. When Giannini's father-in-law died in 1902, his widow and 11 children did not divvy up his $1 million estate. Instead, they enlisted the talented Giannini to manage the property. It included a large block of stock in North Beach's first Italian bank. (Bank of America Historical Collection)


The 10 richest men in the world doubled their fortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report published Monday by advocacy group Oxfam said, highlighting how the global health crisis has deepened the divide between the haves and have-nots as well as the need for policy intervention to address these \"deadly\" inequities.


While the wealth of the world's 10 richest men more than doubled -- increasing from approximately $700 billion to $1.5 trillion between March 2020 and November 2021 -- the incomes of approximately 99% of people around the globe fell during that time, and more than 160 million people have been forced into poverty, the Oxfam report added.


The poverty and economic justice advocacy group calculated the wealth gains of the ultra-elite based on Forbes' real-time data on billionaires. The richest men were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault & family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett.


1901: Carnegie sells out to MorganCarnegie allows J.P. Morgan to buy him out for $480 million, a move which allows Morgan to create US Steel, and makes Carnegie the richest man in the world.


1700s - The settling of the British colonies by small German-speaking religious groups continued. The groups included Swiss Mennonites, Baptist Dunkers, Schwenkfelders, Moravians, Amish, and Waldensians; most German immigrants belonged to the main Lutheran and Reformed churches. The central colonies received the greatest part of this immigration, especially Pennsylvania. As many as half of these immigrants came as redemptioners, that is, they agreed to work in America for four to seven years in exchange for free passage across the Atlantic. German settlers designed and built the Conestoga wagon, which was used in the opening of the American Frontier.


1784 - John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) left his village of Waldorf in Germany and arrived in the United States in 1784 with $25 and seven flutes. He amassed a fortune from real estate dealings and the fur trade, and at his death was by far the richest man in the country, worth an estimated $20 million.


School systems mirror the highly unequal societies in which they are situated. Latin America and the Caribbeanremains the most unequal region in the world. In 21 countries, the richest 20% are, on average, 5 times as likely as the poorest 20% to complete upper secondary school. Half the students in Chile and Mexico would have to be reassigned schools to achieve a uniform socio-economic mixture.


Just months after Warburg wrote those words, the country was struck by the Panic of 1907. The panic galvanized the US Congress, particularly Republican senator Nelson Aldrich, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. In 1908, Aldrich sponsored a bill with Republican representative Edward Vreeland that, among other things, created the National Monetary Commission to study reforms to the financial system. Aldrich quickly hired several advisers to the commission, including Henry Davison, a partner at J.P. Morgan, and A. Piatt Andrew, an economics professor at Harvard University. Over the next two years, they studied banking and financial systems extensively and visited Europe to meet with bankers and central bankers.


By the end of their time on Jekyll Island, Aldrich and his colleagues had developed a plan for a Reserve Association of America, a single central bank with fifteen branches across the country. Each branch would be governed by boards of directors elected by the member banks in each district, with larger banks getting more votes. The branches would be responsible for holding the reserves of their member banks; issuing currency; discounting commercial paper; transferring balances between branches; and check clearing and collection. The national body would set discount rates for the system as a whole and buy and sell securities.


The graph below shows these changes at the regional level (in orange) and at the country-level (in yellow). Notably, around three quarters of the billionaires in the region are from Brazil and Mexico, as is around 80% of their combined net worth. It is important to note, however, that even among billionaires there are wide disparities. While 40% of the billionaires in LAC have an individual net worth between $1-2 billion, the top three richest billionaires have an individual net worth of over $20 billion each. 2ff7e9595c


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