MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Forbes list includes 36 Latinamericans with fortunes above a billion dollars

Telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim Heliú is also the richest man on earth

A total of 36 Latinamericans figure in the Forbes list of men with fortunes greater than a billion dollars, like the Mexican Carlos Slim, the new Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and the Brazilian Eike Batista, as well as drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, “El Chapo,” informed Forbes magazine.

The companies said that BP has also agreed to sell Devon a 50% stake in its Kirby oil sands interests in Alberta, Canada, for 500 million USD and that the two companies would form a venture to develop Kirby.
The deal gives Europe's second-largest oil company by market value reserves a highly prospective exploration which will help it meet its goal of growing production at 1 to 2 percent per annum in the next decade.
The deal also gives BP the entry into Brazil which Chief Executive Tony Hayward has long eyed. However, Devon's assets are in the Campos basin, rather than the Santos basin where most excitement is focused after multi-billion barrel discoveries in recent years.
Devon announced its asset sale program in November, saying it hoped to pull in as much as 7.5 billion USD for its international and Gulf of Mexico assets as it looks to focus on its onshore oil and gas fields in North America.
The company, which felt investors had not ascribed a reasonable value to its Gulf and international assets, has already sold its interest in three deepwater development projects in the Gulf of Mexico for about 1.3 billion.
The companies did not put a figure on the reserves that BP was buying but Colin Smith at ICAP estimated that BP has bought 140 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of booked reserves. However, a BP spokesman said the deal was largely predicated on the exploration upside the fields offer.
BP is also buying around 240 leases in the Gulf of Mexico, including Devon's 30% interest in the major Kaskida discovery, in which BP already has a 70% stake. BP is also adding to its existing interest in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oilfield off the coast of Azerbaijan.
Devon's 5.63% stake will increase BP's interest in ACG, which produces 820,000 barrels of oil a day, to 39.77%.
Chief Executive Tony Hayward has long eyed Brazil

Forbes list includes 36 Latinamericans with fortunes above a billion dollars
A total of 36 Latinamericans figure in the Forbes list of men with fortunes greater than a billion dollars, like the Mexican Carlos Slim, the new Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and the Brazilian Eike Batista, as well as drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, “El Chapo,” informed Forbes magazine.
“The region has had a spectacular year, with Carlos Slim reaching first place on the list, Sebastián Piñera, who is about to take office in Chile, and Eike Batista as the biggest winner” said the US coordinator of the investigation, Luisa Kroll.

The accumulated fortune this year by Mexican businessman Slim reaches 53,5 billion dollars, next to the 35bn of 2009, thanks to his assets in America Movil, the largest cellular phone company in Latin America, and his participation in the newspaper The New York Times.

This has allowed him to take the lead, leaving out the men from the US that has held the first places since 1994 in the world ranking of the richest men.

The second richest Latinamerican is Brazilian businessman Eike Batista, whose fortune has increased to 19,5 billion in just one year, and now reaches 27bn allowing him to occupy the eighth place in the general ranking.

Among the nine Mexicans on the list -and in the penultimate place of the Latin Americans- the drug lord Guzmán Loera also appears, a fugitive from justice who, for the second time, is part of the club of people with more than a billion dollars.

“We don't judge how these fortunes are acquired, as we have made clear in the past, even though we consider this case to be deplorable,” defended the president of the Forbes group, Steve Forbes, whose publication was already very criticized last year for including this person in his list.

In a press conference, Forbes also showed his confidence in that “Mexico will be successful in its fight against drugs as it counts with enormous possibilities of moving forward, although it will still have to carry out structural reforms in the next years.”

The magazine calculates that Guzman has a fortune of a billion dollars, the same that he had in 2009, and it assures that he was included in the list because “we had enough information about him,” according to Kroll.

The majority of the Latin Americans are well known, since the only newcomers on the list are the Chilean Horst Paulmann, president of the property group Cencosud -who, with his family, took the 154th spot on the list-, and the Brazilian Joao Alves of Queiroz Filho, founder of the food company Arisco (616).

Along with this last one and Batista, there are a total of 18 Brazilians that integrate the Forbes list, such as Jorge Paulo Lemann (48), Joseph Safra (64), Dorothea Steinbruch and family (136), Marcel Herrmann Telles (152), Carlos Alberto Sicupira (176), Aloysio de Andrade Faria (201), Abilio dos Santos Diniz (316), and Antonio Erminio de Moraes and family (also at 316).

To those, the following can be added: Moise Safra (421), Elie Horn (437), Antonio Luiz Seabra (also 437), Guilherme Peirao Leal (463), Rubens Ometto Silveira Mello (463), Liu Ming Chung (582), Jayme Garfinkel (828), and Julio Bozano (880).

The second most numerous nationals are from Mexico, due to the fact that, aside from Slim, the following were included: Ricardo Salinas Pliego (63), Germán Larrea Mota Velasco (72), and Alberto Bailleres (82), Jerónimo Arango (212), all of them along with their families, as well as Emilio Azcárraga (655), Roberto Hernández (828), and Alfredo Harp Helu and family (937).

Those who complete the list are: the Chileans Iris Fontbona and family (52), and Eliodoro, Bernardo, and Patricia Matte (who together occupy the 84th spot); the Colombians Julio Mario Santo Domingo (123) and Luis Carlos Sarmiento (135); the Venezuelans Gustavo Cisneros (201) and Lorenzo Mendoza (258), along with their families, and the Argentine Gregorio Pérez Companc and family (488).