Marcos Galperin

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Marcos Galperin
Marcos Galperin y Alec Oxenford.jpg
Galperin in 2009
Born
Marcos Eduardo Galperin

(1971-10-31) 31 October 1971 (age 53)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Alma mater
OccupationBusinessman
Known forCo-founder of Mercado Libre
Title Chairman, President and CEO of Mercado Libre

Marcos Eduardo Galperin (born 31 October 1971) is an Argentine billionaire businessman, who is best known as the co-founder, chairman, President and CEO of Mercado Libre. With an estimated net worth of $6.8 billion (as of July 2024), he is the wealthiest person in Argentina. [1]

Contents

Early and personal life

Marcos Eduardo Galperin was born on 31 October 1971 in the capital city of Buenos Aires to a wealthy family of Jewish descent. [2] The fourth of five sons to Ernesto and Silvia Julia Galperin (née Lebach), his family owned SADESA, one of the largest leather companies in the world. [3]

Galperin attended Saint Andrew's Scots School in the district of Olivos. While in school, Galperin excelled at rugby union. He played on tour in Australia and New Zealand before deciding to study finance at the University of Pennsylvania. [4] There, he became friends with the son of then-president of YPF, José Estenssoro, who was killed in a plane crash through the mountains of Ecuador in 1995. [5] Galperin joined this company when he finished college in 1994 and returned to Argentina. [6] In 1997, he returned to the United States and enrolled at Stanford University, graduating with an MBA in 1999. [1]

Galperin married his wife, Karina, on 11 March 2000. Together, the couple have three children: Félix, Julia y Simón. [7] Galperin has lived in Uruguay since 2002 between Montevideo and Punta del Este. He returned to Argentina in 2015 to support the presidency of Mauricio Macri, [8] but ultimately decided to move back to Uruguay in 2020 because of its friendlier business environment. [9] Many other Argentine businessmen have followed his steps. [9] Galperin is a supporter of Club Atlético Independiente. [10]

Career

Galperin co-founded Mercado Libre while still in business school at Stanford. Finance professor Jack McDonald had been helping Galperin to contact potential investors and asked John Muse, an invited speaker and co-founder of Hicks Muse, if Galperin could drive him to his private plane. Before boarding his plane, Muse expressed his desire to have his fund invest in the idea and soon thereafter the company started. Mercado Libre received funding from JPMorgan Partners, Flatiron Partners, Hicks Muse Tate and Furst, Goldman Sachs, GE Capital and Banco Santander Central Hispano. In September 2001 eBay acquired 19.5% of Mercado Libre in exchange for eBay's recently acquired Brazilian subsidiary of Ibazar.com.br. In this transaction, Mercado Libre also became eBay's exclusive partner for the Latin American region.

Galperin is considered one of Argentina's internet entrepreneurs. As result of this he received a Konex Award in 2008 and a Platinum Konex Award in 2018 as the most important businessmen of the last decade in Argentina. [11] In 1999, Galperin was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur and currently serves its Argentina's board of directors. Endeavor is a global non-profit that selects and supports entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors at Onapsis, in business application security, and is also an investor at COR, [12] a project management tool that predicts and tracks profitability in real time. [13] [14] [15]

In addition to his duties at Mercado Libre, Galperin also sat on the board of directors of Globant until 2020. [16]

He is one of the founders and main investors of the rugby team Miami Sharks, a rugby union team based in Miami, Florida, which was established in 2023. [17]

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References

  1. 1 2 "Marcos Galperin". Forbes. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
  2. ↑ "Latin American retail giant purges site of antisemitic content". i24NEWS . 24 December 2022. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Mercado Libre ("free market" in Spanish), founded by a Jewish-Argentinian businessman Marcos Galperin...
  3. ↑ "Marcos Galperin". Forbes.
  4. ↑ "Meet Argentina's richest man". The Economist. ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  5. ↑ "Argentine oil chief dies in plane crash - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 24 December 2024.
  6. ↑ "The man behind the eBay of Latin America". BBC News. 12 October 2014. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  7. ↑ Naishtat, Silvia (4 September 2020). "El argentino más rico del país: cómo Marcos Galperin construyó su imperio en un garaje". Clarín (in Spanish). Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  8. ↑ "Marcos Galperin, íntimo: cómo es la vida a la uruguaya del hombre más rico de la Argentina". LetraP (in Spanish). Retrieved 24 December 2024.
  9. 1 2 Charquero, Gonzalo (14 October 2022). "Argentine Ex-President Bemoans Brain Drain, Loss of 'Our Jeff Bezos' to Uruguay". Bloomberg Línea. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
  10. ↑ Redacción (26 July 2020). "La tarde que Independiente juntó a Ricardo Bochini con Marcos Galperin". Soy Del Rojo (in Spanish). Retrieved 24 December 2024.
  11. ↑ "Marcos Galperin - Platinum Konex Award".
  12. ↑ "Marcos Galperin, fundador de Mercado Libre sigue apostando por COR". COR (in Spanish). 30 January 2019. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  13. ↑ "Marcos Galperin, CEO of MercadoLibre, Joins Onapsis Board of Directors" . Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "MercadoLibre's Marcos Galperin Joins Board of Argentina Entrepreneur Company Onapsis - Endeavor". Endeavor. 18 November 2014. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  15. ↑ "Onapsis | Board of Directors". Archived from the original on 7 December 2014. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  16. ↑ "Marcos Galperin Net Worth (2022) – wallmine.com". wallmine.com. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  17. ↑ "Miami Sharks: el empresario más rico de Argentina y un grupo de socios compraron un equipo de rugby en EEUU". infobae (in European Spanish). 27 April 2023. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
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