A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network, for example, a local organisation of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community. Local businesses are members, and they elect a board of directors or executive council to set policy for the chamber. The board or council then hires a President, CEO or Executive Director, plus staffing appropriate to size, to run the organisation.
Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, diplomat, poet, legislator, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture. Bello is featured on the old 2,000 Venezuelan bolívar and the 20,000 Chilean peso notes.
Mercado Libre, Inc. is an Argentine company incorporated in the United States that operates online marketplaces dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions, including mercadolibre.com. As of 2016, Mercado Libre had 174.2 million users in Latin America, making it the region's most popular e-commerce site by number of visitors. The company has operations in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Spain, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Cencosud S.A. is a publicly traded multinational retail company. It's the largest retail company in Chile and the third largest listed retail company in Latin America, competing with the Brazilian Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição and the Mexican Walmart de México y Centroamérica as one of the largest retail companies in the region. The company has more than 1045 stores in Latin America.
Álvaro Saieh Bendeck is a Chilean academic, economist, and businessman. He is the chairman of CorpGroup, one of Chile's largest conglomerates.
Juan José Gutiérrez Mayorga is the Chairman of CMI Foods, a part of CMI, a corporation founded in Guatemala in 1920. CMI currently employs people in 14 countries in 3 continents.
César Alierta Izuel is a Spanish businessman, who was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Telefónica S.A. from July 26, 2000 until replaced by José María Álvarez-Pallete in 2016. He guided the company through a significant Latin American expansion. Mr. Alierta earned a bachelor's degree in Law at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain) in 1967. Three years after his degree, he earned a master's degree in Business Administration at Columbia University in New York, United States.
Crispin Conroy is the Permanent Observer of the International Chamber of Commerce to the United Nations Office at Geneva.
Mercedes Rosalba Aráoz Fernández is a Peruvian economist, professor, and politician who served as Second Vice President of Peru from 2016 to 2020. At the beginning of her political career, she served as Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism from 2006 to July 2009, after which she was appointed briefly as Minister of Production, and finally as Minister of Economy and Finance, all portfolios under the second presidency of Alan García.
The legal system of Chile belongs to the Continental Law tradition. The basis for its public law is the 1980 Constitution, reformed in 1989 and 2005. According to it Chile is a democratic republic. There is a clear separation of functions, between the President of the Republic, the Congress, the judiciary and a Constitutional Court. See Politics of Chile. On the other hand, private relationships are governed, mainly, by the Chilean Civil Code, most of which has not been amended in 150 years. There are also several laws outside the Code that deal with most of the business law.
Horst Paulmann Kemna is a German-Chilean billionaire entrepreneur. He is founder and chairman of Cencosud, the largest retail chain in Chile and the third largest in Latin America. According to Forbes, his fortune is estimated at US$4.8 billion, and the second richest man in Chile.
Franco Aldo Parisi Fernández is a Chilean business engineer and economist. He received recognition for doing radio and television programs about economy along with his brother Antonino Parisi, and has been nicknamed "the economist of the people". In 2012 he launched his independent candidacy for president for the 2013 elections in Chile. Parisi ideologically identifies himself as a social liberal.
ProMéxico was a trust fund of the Federal government of Mexico —a subdivision of the Secretariat of Economy— that promoted international trade and investment. ProMéxico used to be in charge of the country's active participation in the international arena by firmly establishing Mexico as an attractive, safe and competitive destination for foreign investment; encouraging the exportation of national products and supporting the internationalization of Mexican companies; providing specialized advisory services to boost the export of products and services and increasing the presence of Mexican businesses abroad, and guiding the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country.
Mauricio García Araujo was a Venezuelan economist who worked in both the private and public sectors. He was the president of the Central Bank of Venezuela between 1987 and 1989 during the presidency of Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989).
Antonio Alfredo Herrera-Vaillant y Buxó-Canel is an exiled Cuban Venezuelan business leader, writer, journalist and historian. In addition to heading the Venezuela-America Chamber of Commerce (VenAmCham), Herrera is the author of six books, including the latest Bolivar, Empresario, which author and El Nuevo Herald columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner named as his "most interesting" book of 2014. In addition to his business and writing success, Herrera is the first non-Spaniard to be honored with a Gold Medal from Spain's prestigious Real Academia de la Historia. Herrera-Vaillant is the president of the Venezuelan Institute of Genealogy.
Vicente Agustín Sota Barros was a Chilean politician. He served two stints in the Chamber of Deputies, first from 1965 to 1969 and again from 1990 to 1998.
Aurora Elvira Williams Baussa is a Chilean business engineer. She was the Chilean Minister of Mining from 11 March 2014 to 11 March 2016.
Carmen Aída Lazo is a Salvadoran economist and dean of the School of Economics and Business at Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios. She was a candidate for Vice President of El Salvador for the National Coalition Party (PCN) for the 2019 Presidential Election.
Gala-Sears was the subsidiary of Sears Roebuck in Chile, which formally began operations on April 2, 1982, the day after the opening of Mall Parque Arauco. It was one of the first international commercial ventures that retired from the country after few years of failures and economic losses.
