And from there it was a life worthy of the silver screen — he married a Playboy model, entered speedboat contests, and made it to the top 20 of the world billionaires list.
By 2012, he was worth $30 million and he was the 10th richest person in the world, gunning hungrily for the top spot.
But by the end of the year, half of his wealth disappeared. According to Bloomberg's billionaires list he now ranks #89 on the list of the world's wealthiest. He could have to hand over more of his wealth
Batista was born in Brazil in 1956 and moved to Germany when he was a teen.
Eduardo P
Governador Valadares Square, in São Vicente de Minas downtown, Minas Gerais, Brazil
In 1974, he began to study metallurgical engineering at the University of Aachen in Germany.
He used to sell insurance door-to-door when he was in college
Baci Cafe & Wine Bar
From the Australian Financial Review:
"So I got highly motivated to make some
extra money and I sold insurance policies from door to door. It's a
great learning experience because some doors open and some don't. I had a lot of teas with old ladies."
But by 1979, he'd dropped out of college before he could finish his degree in metallurgical engineering and returned to Brazil.Source: Robert the matador joins Eike the bull, Australian Financial Review, October 30, 1999 Saturday, Late Edition
After school, he tried to export granite, marble and diamonds.
He told the Australian Financial Review:
"I discovered it was controlled
by the Italian Mafia, so I quit that and began organizing pick and
shovel miners to produce diamonds."
The garimpeiros (shovel miners) would
come to his Rio office with diamonds in little bags. Batista introduced
them to Jewish dealers from Portugal and Antwerp and collected
commissions on each sale.
Source: Robert the matador joins Eike the bull, Australian Financial Review, October 30, 1999 Saturday, Late EditionBut eventually moved on to trading gold, where he made his first millions.
In
the early 1980's Batista returned to Brazil and started a gold trading
firm Autram Aurem, raising seed money from connections in Rio and
quickly establishing a far-flung network of 60 buyers of raw gold in the
Amazon.
From The Age:
From The Age:
"The price of gold was shooting up and
the cruzeiro [Brazil's currency before the real] was going down,"
recalls Willie McLucas, a former manager of a European resource fund
that invested in TVX in the 1980s.
Source: The boy from Oz goes to Rio for the force, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), June 15, 1999 Tuesday, Late EditionHe eventually founded TVX Gold, a gold mining company.
Youtube
The 'X' in the name is supposed to signify 'multiplication,' as in multiplication of wealth.
It was rough going. Once, his bodyguard killed and buried a man in the Amazon
From Australian Financial Review:
Batista was a gold trader at the time, traveling around the pick and shovel miners (garimpeiros) in the Amazon jungle to buy their gold. He also financed some of them and one digger had made no attempt to repay him for six months.
Batista was a gold trader at the time, traveling around the pick and shovel miners (garimpeiros) in the Amazon jungle to buy their gold. He also financed some of them and one digger had made no attempt to repay him for six months.
"On one of my tours I went to see
him and said: 'Where is my money?' He went screaming mad. He was a
drunk. I made the mistake of calling him a son of a b--ch (filho da
puta). I turned around and walked a few metres away and bang! He shot me
in the back."
"He was drunk. I was lying on the
floor and the other guys' [his bodyguards] instinctive reaction was to
shoot him because they didn't know whether he would shoot them next."
They buried the garimpeiro in an unmarked grave at the end of the airstrip.
Source: Robert the matador joins Eike the bull, Australian Financial Review, October 30, 1999 Saturday, Late EditionAnd some say Batista wasn't always on the straight and narrow in his dealings.
"Eike would go into the jungle
and show these village chiefs a 10-day-old newspaper and say, 'Look,
here's the price of gold,'" McLucas, told The Age.
"Meanwhile, the price had gone
up, and would go up even more by the time he got back to Rio. He'd pay
the chiefs in local currency, which was dropping, and sell the gold in
hard currency. You couldn't lose."
Source: The boy from Oz goes to Rio for the force, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), June 15, 1999 Tuesday, Late Edition
Source: The boy from Oz goes to Rio for the force, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), June 15, 1999 Tuesday, Late Edition
In 1983 founded EBX, the umbrella under which he would found all his other companies.
Between 2004 and 2012 he would add six public companies under the EBX umbrella:
- OGX (oil), MPX (energy),
- LLX (logistics),
- MMX (mining),
- OSX (offshore industry),
- and CCX (coal mining).
He became a superstar in 1991 when he eloped with model, actress and carnival dancer Luma de Oliveira IN 1991.
Flickr
Luma de Oliveira
The thing was, Batista was seeing a Brazilian socialite at the time they were married (because Oliveira was pregnant) unbeknownst to Oliveira.
From People:
In the four years before they got divorced, they had two children—Thor and Olin.
Meanwhile, Batista started really living like a billionaire — he won several power boating championship titles.
In the 1990's Batista was the Brazilian, U.S. and world champion in the Super Offshore Powerboat class.
In 2006, he covered the 220 nautical miles between Santos and Rio de Janeiro in just a sliver over three hours and beat the record for the course in his boat, the Spirit of Brazil, according to a Dow Jones profile of the CEO.
Source: Dow Jones
In 2006, he covered the 220 nautical miles between Santos and Rio de Janeiro in just a sliver over three hours and beat the record for the course in his boat, the Spirit of Brazil, according to a Dow Jones profile of the CEO.
Source: Dow Jones
He bought lots of really expensive things.
Really, just a whole bunch of expensive stuff.
...and this private jet...
...also, this private jet...
...and this one.
And this really expensive car.
He
bought a $1.2 million Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. Then he used it to
decorate the lounge of the Jardim Botanico mansion in Rio.
And he sure could afford it. At the start of 2012, he was worth more than $30 billion.
Source: BornRich.com
And he sure could afford it. At the start of 2012, he was worth more than $30 billion.
Source: BornRich.com
In 2001, he had to resign from TVX, his gold mining company
After
plans for a gold mine in Greece went bust because of political
opposition, once high-flier TVX took a decided turn for the worse. And
then the price of gold started to fall, reaching a paltry $300 an ounce.
Batista resigned in 2001, after the cash-strapped producer was forced to put itself up for sale.
Source: The Globe and Mail
Batista resigned in 2001, after the cash-strapped producer was forced to put itself up for sale.
Source: The Globe and Mail
Environmental groups started agitating about what his businesses were doing to the environment.
You don't want to mess with Greenpeace or anyone else who is concerned with the health of Amazon River dolphins near Batista's mining operations.
But 10 years later, Batista bought back into the gold business.
In
2011, Batista bought out Ventana Gold Corp., a company he's had his eye
on for a while by then. He first snapped up a 9.5% stake in Ventana in
July 2009 through EBX, and by 2010, he controlled 20% of the company's
stock.
They finally came to a full sale agreement in 2011, when Batista sweetened the deal, which valued Ventana at a little more than C$1.5 million.
Source: Bloomberg
They finally came to a full sale agreement in 2011, when Batista sweetened the deal, which valued Ventana at a little more than C$1.5 million.
Source: Bloomberg
And one of his companies bought the rights to the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Brazil.
Flickr
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter Keith Jardine demonstrates grappling moves during an exhibition in the hangar bay.
Source: Fighters Only Magazine
In the spring of 2012 he was the 10th richest man in the world.
AP
Eike Batista
"I suffered very heavy asthma, so my
mother threw me in the cold swimming pool," he 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."
Batista also said he wanted to repair Brazil's reputation:
"Brazil lost two generation of Brazilians
to the crisis between '84 and '97," he said. "Brazil probably paid $150
billion in extra risk spread [during that time]. The ratings agencies
put Brazil in the same level as Nigeria, and today it's better than
Germany."
By the end of 2012, however, he lost two-thirds of his fortune and needed cash.
BloombergTV
And the mining company, MMX, got slapped with a $1.8 billion way-past-due tax bill.
He started off 2012 with more than $30 billion. By the end of the year, his net worth was down to about $12.4 billion.
Source:The Economist
Batista struck a deal with a sovereign fund in Abu Dhabi to get his hands on some extra cash.
Wikimedia Commons
He was raising money to develop his oil and mining businesses.
Source: Bloomberg
But if he doesn't deliver a 5% annual return on Abu Dhabi's investment, he has to turn over more of the company by 2019.
The amount that Batista would have to turn over is unknown, what is known is that he's taking on more risk.
But he's probably okay with that.
But he's probably okay with that.
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