Billionaires to millionaire
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New York: Having built his empire for years, Brazilian commodities tycoon and world’s eighth richest man Eike Batista has seen things fall apart in the last 16 months after commodity trading brought down his networth from $34.5 billion to $200 million, says Bloomberg Billionaires and Huffington Post.
Mr Batista, who has been called the Donald Trump of Brazil, may have suffered one of the “worst wealth losses in history,” says Bloomberg Billionaires Index editor Matt Miller.
“He was the face of Brazilian capitalism. He’s mired in debt. This is a tragic fall for him.” Mubadala Development Co., a sovereign-wealth fund out of Abu Dhabi, converted an investment in Batista’s companies into debt, further eroding the value of his overall assets.
EBX Group Co., Batista’s commodities empire, now owes $1.5 billion to Mubadala. And, that put Mr Batista over the edge, reducing his personal wealth to millions, not billions anymore.
Mr Miller says he “tended to oversell the amount of resources it had,” and that Mr Batista would have to “constantly borrow against one company to pay for the needs of others.” Unlike billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Mr Batista was ostentatious about his wealth, even declaring that he would overtake Mexico’s Carlos Slim for the world’s richest person title by 2015.
He said: “Just give me time, let me work please.” On how he worked towards his ambition, he said: “I suffered very heavy asthma, so my mother threw me in the cold swimming pool,” Mr Batista said.
“So, I cured my asthma through discipline, and I saw that you could achieve things by performing, and it’s part of my DNA… I’m very competitive.” “I think big, and I’m not afraid to take risks — even if I’m alone,’ he said at the time. “I started out in the gold business. I know about risk and loss and having to build a business from scratch.” Well, Batista now has one year and five months to earn back $66.8 billion.
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