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Carlos Slim
Born
1. Mexico, about 125 billion dollars, a figure Forbes gives for Slim and his family together. The core is control of América Móvil, Latin America's largest mobile operator, built from the 1990 privatisation of Telmex, plus Grupo Carso's construction, retail and industrial businesses and stakes in mining and property. He is sixteenth in the world on this list.
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Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco
2. Mexico, about 67.1 billion dollars. Larrea controls Grupo México, whose Southern Copper subsidiary is one of the world's largest copper miners, as well as railway and infrastructure businesses. The big jump in his fortune reflects high copper prices, so his position is more exposed to commodity swings than most on this list.
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Iris Fontbona
3. Chile, about 52.6 billion dollars, valued by Forbes for Fontbona and her family. She is the widow of Andrónico Luksic Abaroa, and the family controls the London-listed copper miner Antofagasta and the holding company Quiñenco, with interests in banking (Banco de Chile), drinks and shipping. Her sons Jean-Paul and Andrónico run the main businesses.
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Eduardo Saverin
Born
4. Brazil, about 35.9 billion dollars. Saverin's wealth comes mainly from the stake in Meta he kept from co-founding Facebook, and he runs the venture firm B Capital from Singapore, where he lives. He is the odd one out here: his fortune has no connection to a Latin American business, though Forbes counts him as Brazilian.
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André Esteves
Born
5. Brazil, about 20.2 billion dollars, nearly three times his 2025 figure. Esteves is the senior partner of BTG Pactual, Latin America's largest investment bank, which he built, sold to UBS in 2006 and bought back in 2009. His brief arrest in a 2015 corruption investigation cost him the chairmanship for a time. The recent rise reflects BTG's share price.
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Jorge Paulo Lemann
Born
6. Brazil, about 19.8 billion dollars for Lemann and his family. With partners Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira, who also appear on this list, he built Garantia bank, then a brewing empire that became AB InBev, and 3G Capital, whose holdings have included Burger King owner Restaurant Brands and Kraft Heinz. His single largest asset is the AB InBev stake.
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Alejandro Baillères
7. Mexico, about 19.5 billion dollars. Baillères chairs Grupo BAL, inherited from his father Alberto in 2022, which includes the silver and gold miner Industrias Peñoles and Fresnillo, the El Palacio de Hierro department stores and insurance and pension businesses. Like Larrea's, his recent rise owes much to precious metal prices.
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Jaime Gilinski Bacal
Born
8. Colombia, about 14.7 billion dollars, the richest Colombian for a second year. Gilinski built his fortune in banking, chiefly Banco GNB Sudameris, and in 2022 took control of the food group Nutresa and large stakes in Grupo Sura after a long takeover fight. He also develops property, including a former US air base beside the Panama Canal.
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David Vélez
9. Colombia, about 14.5 billion dollars. Vélez is the only founder in this top ten who built his fortune from a start-up: he co-founded the São Paulo digital bank Nubank in 2013 and remains chief executive of Nu Holdings, listed in New York since 2021, with over 100 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. His wealth is almost entirely his Nu shares.
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Juan Carlos Escotet
10. Venezuela, about 11.3 billion dollars; he also holds Spanish citizenship. Escotet started as a bank messenger at seventeen, founded Banesco, which grew into one of Venezuela's largest banks with operations across the region, and in 2013 bought the Spanish lender Abanca, now the main source of his fortune.
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Luis Carlos Sarmiento
Born
11. Colombia, about 10 billion dollars. Sarmiento, now in his nineties, built Grupo Aval, the holding company for four Colombian banks including Banco de Bogotá, the pension fund Porvenir and the infrastructure group Corficolombiana. He started in construction and property before buying into banking, and his son Luis Carlos Sarmiento Gutiérrez now leads the group.
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María Asunción Aramburuzabala
Born
13. Mexico, about 9.3 billion dollars, the richest woman in Mexico. She inherited her family's stake in Grupo Modelo, the Corona brewer, and when it was sold to AB InBev in 2013 converted it into AB InBev shares. She runs the investment firm Tresalia Capital, with stakes in property, media and other businesses. Number 12, Brazil's Fernando Roberto Moreira Salles, appears under his brother Pedro below.
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Pedro Moreira Salles
Born
14. Brazil, about 9.1 billion dollars. Pedro is co-chairman of Itaú Unibanco, Latin America's largest private bank, which his family controls with the Setubal and Villela families through holding companies. His brother Fernando Roberto Moreira Salles ranks twelfth at about 9.9 billion dollars, and two more brothers each hold around 5.1 billion, so the Moreira Salles family fortune is far larger than any single figure suggests.
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Jorge Moll Filho
15. Brazil, about 7.5 billion dollars for Moll and his family. A cardiologist, he founded Rede D'Or São Luiz, which grew from a single diagnostics clinic in Rio de Janeiro into Brazil's largest private hospital network and listed in 2020. It is the only healthcare fortune in this top tier.
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Marcel Telles
16. Brazil, about 7.4 billion dollars. Telles is Lemann's long-time partner and ran Brahma, the brewer whose mergers produced AmBev and later AB InBev, where his management of costs and staff incentives became the group's model. Most of his wealth sits in AB InBev and 3G-linked holdings.
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Marcos Galperin
Born
17. Argentina, about 7.2 billion dollars, the richest Argentine. Galperin founded MercadoLibre in 1999 while studying at Stanford, and it became Latin America's largest e-commerce and payments company, listed on Nasdaq. In 2026, after 26 years running it, he stepped down as chief executive and became chairman.
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Beto Sicupira
18. Brazil, about 6.9 billion dollars for Sicupira and his family. The third of the Garantia partners with Lemann and Telles, he ran the retailer Lojas Americanas for years and sat on the boards of AB InBev and 3G companies. Americanas' 2023 accounting scandal and bankruptcy filing, which damaged the trio's reputation, is part of his record.
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Miguel Krigsner
19. Brazil, about 6.8 billion dollars. Born in Bolivia, Krigsner trained as a pharmacist and in 1977 opened a small compounding pharmacy in Curitiba that became O Boticário, now part of Grupo Boticário, Brazil's largest cosmetics and fragrance group with thousands of franchised shops. He remains its main owner and chairman.
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