Latin American Founders Who Built Across Borders

Argentina, e-commerce. Galperin started MercadoLibre in 1999 and spread it across 18 Latin American countries, each with its own payment habits and inflation. The answer was to build the plumbing itself: Mercado Pago for buyers without cards, its own logistics network where postal services were unreliable, and pricing that could be adjusted country by country. He handed the chief executive role to a successor and became executive chairman.

Colombia and Brazil, banking. Vélez, a Colombian, founded Nubank in São Paulo in 2013 with a fee-free credit card managed entirely from an app, aimed at customers Brazil's concentrated banks overcharged or ignored. He then took it to Mexico and Colombia, applying for local licences and building separate operations rather than serving them from Brazil. Nu now serves well over a hundred million customers, and he remains chief executive.

Mexico, cement. Zambrano took over Cemex, his grandfather's regional cement firm in Monterrey, and from 1992 bought producers in Spain, Venezuela, the Philippines, the United States and Britain. Cemex became known for operational discipline, tracking ready-mix trucks by satellite to cut delivery times. The 2007 purchase of Rinker left it heavily indebted when the financial crisis hit, and it spent years selling assets. He died in 2014.

Mexico, baking. Servitje co-founded Grupo Bimbo in Mexico City in 1945 with packaged sliced bread and a fleet of delivery vans serving small corner shops. That route-delivery system became the model for expansion into Latin America and later the United States, where Bimbo bought established bakeries, making it the world's largest baking company. He died in 2017.

Chile, retail. Paulmann, born in Germany, opened the first Jumbo hypermarket in Santiago in 1976 and grew Cencosud into one of Latin America's largest retailers, entering Argentina in 1982 and later Brazil, Peru and Colombia through new stores and acquisitions. Running supermarkets, department stores and shopping centres across countries with very different inflation rates was the core skill. He died in 2025.

Brazil, cosmetics. Seabra founded Natura in São Paulo in 1969 and built it on direct selling through a large network of consultants, mostly women, plus ingredients sourced from Amazon communities. Natura took the consultant model into Argentina, Chile, Mexico and beyond, then bought foreign brands such as Aesop, The Body Shop and Avon. The debt from those deals later forced it to sell Aesop and The Body Shop.

Colombia, brewing. Santo Domingo built Bavaria into Colombia's dominant brewer and then expanded it into Ecuador, Peru and Panama, buying local breweries rather than exporting beer. In 2005 he merged Bavaria into SABMiller in exchange for a large stake, turning a family brewing business into a holding in a global brewer. He died in 2011.

Venezuela, media. Cisneros took his family's Venezuelan television and retail business into Spanish-language media across the Americas, investing in Univision in the United States and launching satellite television for Latin America. Spreading the business beyond Venezuela proved prescient as the domestic economy collapsed. He died in 2023.

Brazil, brewing and consumer brands. Lemann and his partners at Banco Garantia bought the brewer Brahma in 1989, merged it with Antarctica to form AmBev, then combined with Belgium's Interbrew and in 2008 bought Anheuser-Busch, creating AB InBev. Their method, exported country by country, was zero-based budgeting and a partnership culture of young, heavily incentivised managers. The same approach struggled later at Kraft Heinz.

Argentina, financial technology. Casares, raised on a sheep farm in Patagonia, founded Patagon in 1997, an online brokerage and bank that operated across Latin America and sold to Santander in 2000. He later started Banco Lemon, a low-cost bank for Brazilians without accounts, and then the bitcoin custody firm Xapo. His career shows the early internet's attempt to treat the region as one market, and its limits.

Argentina, steel. Rocca leads Techint, the Italian-Argentine group his grandfather founded, and turned its seamless steel pipe business into Tenaris by combining mills in Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Japan and later the United States under one brand. Selling pipes to oil companies worldwide from plants in several countries protected it from any single government or currency, a hard lesson in Argentina.

Mexico, telecommunications. After buying control of the state phone company Telmex in 1990, Slim built América Móvil by acquiring mobile operators across Latin America in the early 2000s and running them under the Claro brand. Prepaid plans for customers without bank accounts drove growth, and it became the region's largest mobile operator, often facing regulators worried about its dominance.

Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia, aviation. Efromovich, born in Bolivia and raised in Chile, made money in Brazilian oil services and in 2004 bought the bankrupt Colombian airline Avianca, merging it with El Salvador's TACA to form a network across Central and South America. Running one airline under several countries' ownership and aviation rules was the challenge. He lost control of Avianca in 2019 after a loan default.