Top 10 wealthiest people in Argentina

Argentine sparks an image of a vibrant lifestyle. The country covers most of the southern portion of South America and is the world’s eights largest country. Covered in plains, deserts, tundras and forests, mountains and rivers and ocean shore Argentina has one of the most diverse landscapes in the world. It included South Atlantic islands like the Falkland Islands and even claims portion of Antarctica. Argentina has rich sources of valuable Minerals which is a major part of its economy. Even its name comes from the Latin word for silver, Argentum. Argentina was once amongst the wealthiest nations in the world because of its livestock and cereals production. It is mostly an Urban country nowadays. One-third of Argentina’s population lives in Buenos Aires, and the rest is somewhat evenly distributed among other cities like Mar del Plata, La Plata, and Bahia Blanca. It has one of the most powerful economies in the region. It is largely dependant on services and manufacturing, as well as agribusiness and ranching. Argentina also has one of the highest GNPs and GDPs in the region. But despite this Argentina has had a rocky economic history with multiple downfalls, experiencing high inflation, and unemployment in the last few decades. The major shift in the economy happened in the mid-70s, when the Argentine government lowered import barriers, liberalizes restriction of foreign borrowing and supported the peso against other currencies.  But this was followed by chronic inflation due to growing government spending, raises in salaries that couldn’t be supported long term along with inefficient production. The Argentinian peso was fluctuating a lot at the end of the 90’s, but by the middle of the 2010s country’s economy managed to recover and its financial sector started to gain attention with some of the better forex brokers in Argentina gathering in the capital. Despite these challenges, Argentina and specifically Argentinian billionaires have managed to retain and grow their assets. We’ve combined a list of Top Ten Richest People in Argentina and we’ll tell you all about how they managed to get their wealth.

Gregorio Perez Companc

• Age: 84
• Industry: Oil & gas
• Networth: $1.2 billion

The first person on our list of Wealthiest people from Argentina is Gregorio Perez Companc, or “Don Gregorio”. He is one of the most famous businessmen in Argentina is the mains shareholder of Molinos Rios de la Plata. Gregorio was an adopted child, who ended up in the family of Margarita Companc de Perez Acuan, a local socialite and wealthy Argentinan herself. Through his privileged upbringing, he got to go to the La Salle college preparatory school, but he left before graduating. Gregorio married a rich heiress, Maria del Carmen “Munchi” Sundblad Beccar Varela. Gregorios family needed up purchasing Banco Rio de la Plata which at the time was the largest private sector in the country. Gregorio was named director of the banks but this is not he acquired most of his current wealth. He hit the jackpot with a family-based oil and gas conglomerate, as he became the ahead of the company that was built by his adoptive father. The company ended up expanding its interest across domestic activities and through the number of different industries through the privatization program that was initiated by President Carlos Menem. The company continued to flourish until 2001 when Gregorio announced that he was selling 60% of the family shares of Petrolera Perez Companc to Brazillian oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. Reportedly the shared were worth over $1 billion in cash and bonds. Right now Gregorio, along with his wife is operating a small ice cream parlor chain called Munchi. He is also known for his love of modern and vintage cars and reportedly owns a Bugatti, a Maserati, and a limited-edition Ferrari F50.

Eduardo Eurnekian

• Age:87
• Industry: Telecommunications/Airports
• Networth: $1.2 billion

This Argentinan billionaire is actually of Armenian descent. Eduardo was born to immigrant parents in 1932. The family operated a textile manufacturer which upon the rise of Argentina’s economy managed to rise and developed with it. The textile manufacturer of the Eurnekian family became an important supplier to international sporting apparel firm Puma and was actually on its way to reaching an immense success. But Argentina’s struggling economy got int the way of expanding this partnership and reaching new levels of manufacturing and sales. During the crisis, Jose Alfredo Martinez issues a free trade round and deregulatory policies which put the company in a deep crisis. but Eduardo had no plans of giving up.  His family managed to get back on its feet, largely through the loans from BANADE, Argentine small business lender and after they managed to restore their status Eduardo purchased “Cablevision S.A”  a local tv station that was pretty successful at the time. This move made him into one of Argentina’s richest people. He had plans to turn the tv around and through hard work and partially because of good timing he slowly started to accumulate income. His purchase came at the right time. since then  Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo’s implementations of the Convertibility Plan brought financial stability to the country. By this time Cablevision S.A was the second-largest cable operator and Eduardo sol 51% of stake to Tele-Communications Inc for $350 million and in 1997 he netter $320 million by selling shares to CEI Citicorp Holdings SA. In 1998 a consortium led by Eurnekian won a 30-year concession in 1998 to run 33 of Argentina’s main airports which is part of how he managed to get on the list of the wealthiest people in Argentina.

Eduardo Francisco Constantini

• Age:73
• Industry: Real Estate
• Networth: $ 1.3 billion

Born in Buenos Aires in 1946, Eduardo graduated from Universidad Catolica Argentina and got the Master of Art in Quantitative Economics from the University of East Anglia, England. He built his career according to his studies and worked as a controller first in Penta S.A and then moved up to become its finance director.  Later in his career, he was a member of the board of Huancayo S.A. Argentinian billionaire decided to get into stock-brokerage in the 80s  and it turned out to be a successful step for Eduardo. He acquired substantial wealth from stock brokerage and in 1991 he opened Consultation Asset Management, a company dedicated to managing investment funds mainly in Latin America. The same year he founded his first real estate project, Consultation SA, that focused primarily on large projects. Since Consultation SA was doing pretty well, Eduardo developed Nordelta, the most innovative real estate company in all of Argentina.  Nordelta houses 35,000 residents and overs 1,700 hectares. It has two medical centers, five schools, a mall, and five movie theatres, a sports club, golf course, restaurant and gas stations. This massive project brought a lot of income to the Argentinian billionaire because of its fresh take on real estate. In 2009, Constantini founded the Consultatio Real Estate branch in the United States. The group went on to develop Key Biscayne Oceana, a complex of exclusive apartment and Bilas facing the sea and the Oceana Bal Harbour in Miami.

Jorge Horacio Brito

• Age: 67
• Industry: Banking
• Networth:$1.5 billion

Jorge Horacio Brito comes from a wealthy family in Buenos Aires and is the next person on our rich Argentinians list. He is a banker and a businessman who is the CEO of the largest bank in Argentina, Marco bank. The bank was formed because Brito, founded Anglia, a brokerage firm in 1976. After Anglia became a well-established brokerage, Brito purchased Financiera Macro, Anglia’s biggest competitor and then transformed it into Macro Bank. The banks would go on to acquire multiple provincial banks privatized during the 1990s, including banks like the Banks of Salta and of neighboring Tucumàn Province. Brito was named Chairman of the board of directors and soon Macro Banks was one of the biggest private banks in Argentina. Brito also dabbles in Real Estate and a big sum of his wealth comes from this industry. He started investing in real estate through Vizora, an Argentine real estate firm. Brito’s Vizora developer purchased a prime, 2.5-hectare property in San Isidro for the construction of the condominium complex with an 11-hectare parking lot. Brito’s group has been focusing on Puerto Madero, in Bueno Aires. The team has already build Remeros Beach, Link Towers and other important projects for the area. Another area that this Argentinian billionaire is interested in is actually agriculture. He is involved with farming and cattle raising, cow breeding and meat industrialization and commercialization. He owns Inversora Juramento Inc, his most successful venture into agriculture which deals with farming-cattle companies and because of its high-quality standards is considered a model company. Meanwhile, his other agriculture company, Frigorificos Bermejo Inc, is a cold storage locates in Pichanai, Salta and operates a model industrial slaughtering and meat industrialization beef plant.

Hugo Sigman

• Age:73
• Industry: Pharmaceuticals
• Networth:$1.6 billion

The next person on our list started his successful business with his wife, Silvia Gold. Hugo studies medicine at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and is a medical doctor. He also graduated from the Social Psychology School led by Dr. Pichon Riviere. So Hugo definitely knew what he was getting into before starting a billion-dollar business. At the beginning of his medical career, he served as Resident at the Psychiatry Service of Policlinico Lanus, directer by Professor Mauricio Goldenberg. He moved up the ladder pretty quickly, firstly continuing as Chief of Residents and then founded and became the director of the Psychiatric Emergency Unit. He moved to Spain in 1976, to work as a Hospital but decided to pursue something more entrepreneurial instead. That is when he started to get into the Pharmaceutical industry. His wife was with him on this journey and together they founded Chemo Group, a chemical-pharmaceutical company in 1978. It eas only a start for a much larger Insud Group. Once the company in Spain started to take off the Hugo moved back to Argentina with his wife and started to work on businesses there. He developed more working spaces and developed his existing business. Nowadays there are three major companies under Insud Group: Chemo, specializing in active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished dosage forms. It supplies 1,200 pharmaceutical companies around the world. Exeltis is the second company under Insud, and specializes in female health products in more than 40 countries. The latest addition to Insud is mAbxience a biotech company that produces biosimilar medicines. The pharmaceutical business that the Argentinian billionaire built with his wife has been a success for the last 4 decades and has proven that hard work and right entrepreneurial moves can often lead to major success. They remain as one of the richest Argentinan families.

Helena Revoredo

• Age:72
• Industry: Security services
• Networth: $1.6 billion

Up next is the only woman that made it to the list and she is also among the richest woman in Argentina. We struggled to find other women who have been wildly successful and were either born or resided in Argentina. Considering the shaky economic backgroun and the constant shift in policies it’s no wonder that Argentina hasn’t had time to think about the promoting businesswomen or entrepreneurs. But We decided to include Helena Revoredo on our list of the richest people of Argentina even though she no longer lives in Argentina. Revoredo who currently lives in Spain now control’s her late husband’s Herberto Gut’s security company. We haven’t had any similar industries on the list so far so it’s refreshing to see that something other than oil and gas also bring money to the country. Helena Revoredo is chair of Prosegur, a Spanish private security company known for its fleet of 5,2000 yellow armored vans. The company was founded by Gut in 1976. Revoredo’s husband died tragically in a car accident the year after founding the company. Currently the son of Helena and Herberto, Christian Gut is the CEO of their company while their daughter is part of the board of Directors at Prosegur. The major security company operates in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The company focuses a lot on giving back to their community. Prosegur Foundations which is managed by Revoredo works on providing funds for education for people with disabilities and schools in Latin American countries.

Marcos Galperin

• Age: 48
• Industry: e-Commerce
• Networth: $2.5 billion

Marcos Galperin was born into a wealthy Argentinian family in Buenos Aires and ended up becoming Argentina’s billionaire’s list. His family is the owner of SADESA, one of the largest leather companies in the world. Through his privileged upbringing, he was able to attend Saint Andrew’s Scots School in Olivos, later traveling to the U.S in the 19990s to study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He pursued the finance studies and while in the University he befriended YPF (Argentinian energy company) president’s son and through his connections started working at the company soon after.  He came back to Argentina later on but decided to go back to the U.S to pursue his studies once again. This time around he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business and in 1999 he earned his M.B.A. MercadoLibre became a huge success that prompted Marcos to become a billionaire. He started working on it while he was still enrolled at Stanford and used all of his connections to get the business started. MercadoLibre is an Argentine company incorporates in the United States that operated online marketplaces dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions. It has almost 200 million users across Latin America. Marco’s finance professor helped him set up the necessary connections to get the funding for his idea.  Marco’s company later managed to receive funding from JPMorgan Partners, Flatiron Partners Goldman Sachs and so on. His website was so successful than in 2001 eBay acquired 19.5% of MercadoLibre in exchange for eBay’s Ibazar.com.br. Through this transaction, he also became eBay’s exclusive partner for the Latin American region. To this day he is considered to be one of Argentina’s best entrepreneurs.

Alberto Roemmers

• Age: 92
• Industry: Pharmaceuticals
• Networth: $2.6 billion

The next billionaire on our list is one of the oldest billionaires in Argentina and he acquired his wealth through Pharmaceuticals. Alberto Roemmers has the net worth of $2.6 billion and got here through year and years of hard work and dedication to his companies and businesses. But he definitely got a head start, because he inherited his father’s company Laboratorios Roemmers. Alberto’s father, Alberto J. Roemmers was a German immigrant that came to Argentina in the early 1920s. The companies operate in multiple countries including Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico. When the Argentinians billionaire’s father came to the county he had no expectations that his company would end up producing the revenue of over 1$ billion. Nowadays Laboratorios Roemmers produces a variety of drugs, including antibiotics and anti-inflammatory treatments. The company is privately held and Alberto Roemmers is the majority owner of the firm. The largest pharmaceuticals group is also one of the top 50 generic drug manufacturers in the world. The firm also controls 13% of the Argentine pharmaceuticals market through companies like Roemmers, Investi, Argentia, and Maprimed. Currently, the company’s CEO is Eduardo Macchiavello, since the Roemmers family completely stepped aside from managing the company as a family concern and are among Argentina’s wealthiest people. They are still involved in the company’s executive board and are consulted on all major strategic decisions. Alberto and his wife had four children,  Alberto, Alejandro Guillermo, Alfredo Pablo, and Andreas Christan. Their youngest son, Christian passed away in 1998 at the age of 30, due to a tragic paragliding accident in the Cerro Arco mountains.

Paolo Rocca

• Age:67
• Industry: Engineering
• Networth: $3.8 billion (with brother Gianfelice Mario Rocca)

Wealthiest people in Argentina often come from rich families. Paolo unsurprisingly was also born into a rich family and was guaranteed success since the day he was born. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that he managed to keep the family business up and running along with his brother. Paolo definitely lived a life of privilege but he made sure that he had the necessary skills to maintain it. Together with Gianfelica, Paolo oversees the Techint Group, the global conglomerate founded by their grandfather, industrialist Agostino Rocca. The Techint group dates back all the way to 1945. Agostino played an important role in Italy’s steel industry in the 1930s and brought his skills and practices to Argentina a decade later, starting an immensely successful business venture. The teaching group focuses on companies that operate in steel production, engineering and construction projects, mining, oil, and gas. As their side projects, the members of the Techint group also oversee some companies that have to do with Italian hospitals and the healthcare sector, keeping their business connected to their roots. According to Forbes, the Techint brings over $18.5 billion in annual sales and employs more than 55,000 people globally. Paolo serves as the chairman of the Tenaris, a company that operates under Techint. He is also a chairman of Ternium, another engineering company. Paolo was born in Milan but had the opportunity to pursue his studies in the United States, joining the Harvard Business School and getting an MBA. Paolo got his work experience at the World Bank and then went on to help out with the family business. He became an assistant to the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Techint Group, and later became an Executive Vice-president of Siderca. He became the CEO of the group in 2002 while remaining the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tamsa and Ternium. Paolo led his family business into multiple acquisitions throughout Latin America and expanded the company to reach over 20 countries.

Alejandro Bulgheroni – the richest man in Argentina

• Age:75
• Industry: Oil & gas
• Networth: $3.1 billion

Like many people on this list, Alejandro was also brought up int eh wealthy family. In fact, Bugheronis were among the top richest families in Argentina for decades. Alejandro’s father founded energy company Bridas Corp,  in 1948 to provide parts for the national oil company’s pipeline network. The company has since brought billions to the family and turned out to be one of the most successful businesses around Argentina.

Alejandro himself was born in Rufino, Santa Fe Province. He was born to a Spanish mother and an Italian father with the same name. He got his education at the University of Buenos Aires and got a degree in Industrial Engineering following his father’s footsteps. The degree came in very handy when Alejandro inherited his father’s company in 1985. Along with his brother, Carlos who passed away in September of 2016, Alejandro took control of the company. Carlos dies of cancer, leaving Alejandro as the Chair of the company. But back in 2011, The Bulgheroni brothers sold a 50% stake in Bridas to China’s state overseas oil company, CNOOC for $3.1 billion. Later the company entered into a cash-free agreement with BP to form the largest privately-owned integrated energy company in Argentina, forming the Pan American Energy Group.  With the energy company at hand, he is the richest man in Argentina and has made the best of his legacy that he received from his father. Despite his age, he is still very much involved in the business and has no plans to give up the management position or the title of Argentina’s richest person.