Born in Colombia to a Palestinian-Chilean father and Lebanese-Colombian mother, both of them Christian, Álvaro Saieh Bendeck is today a prominent, self-made and high-profile billionaire in Chile. In fact, back in 1976 upon his return to Santiago, Chile after obtaining his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Economics degree from the University of Chicago, he began his business career as a consultant for various government ministries and shortly thereafter as a research analyst for the Chilean Central Bank. Moreover, his breakthrough in business came in the late 1980s after spending more than a decade building his capital from consulting and research analysis work when he partnered with other Chileans of Middle Eastern roots to buy a small but solid commercial bank known then as Banco Osorno y La Unión S.A. Soon after, he kept building his war chest buying other financial entities by integrating them efficiently. Nevertheless, it was in 1995 when he bought the oldest commercial banking operation in the country known then as Banco de Concepción S.A. that his career as an entrepreneur took off. Accordingly, being distressed showing numbers in the red after the assumption of liabilities, he restructured the institution by injecting capital, cutting costs through synergies and merging his other financial holdings into it while renaming the newly established entity as CorpBanca S.A.
Furthermore, the expansion of CorpBanca was rapid adding banking branches scattered along the narrow Chilean territory through organic growth and more importantly, doing acquisitions abroad including buying strong financial players in Colombia and Venezuela while amounting to a disbursement of $ 1.2 billion. However, the one transaction cementing him as a serious magnate was selling a controlling ownership stake in his commercial bank recently, containing an impressive 400 branches in Chile and Colombia while holding over $ 20 billion in assets, to Itaú Unibanco S.A. from Brazil for $ 1.8 billion keeping a 30% shareholding in the business today. The proceeds from the sale were intended to cover funding needs in different non-core investments. Accordingly, Álvaro Saieh Bendeck was able to diversify away from commercial banks long before this transaction after investing in other strategic sectors like media, real estate and retail. As a result, Álvaro Saieh Bendeck has been able to grab market share aggressively in the Chilean media industry consolidating his hefty acquisitions of daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, tabloids, magazines and radio stations into a gigantic concern known as Consorcio Periodístico de Chile S.A. or COPESA. In fact, COPESA owns in its portfolio the country’s second largest daily known as la “La Tercera” while winning ground from “El Mercurio” belonging to low-profile but powerful publishing titan in Chile Agustín Edwards Eastman. Likewise, his investments in the real estate arena include two Hyatt Hotels including the country’s biggest hotel of them all known as the “Grand Hyatt Santiago”, 10 finished indoor malls as well as another 3 under construction, 60 strip malls and 70 stand-alone store properties dispersed throughout the nation. On the other hand, his investments in retail include several acquisitions including his introductory foray in it by buying along with partners one of the oldest but struggling supermarket chain in the country known as Supermercados Unimarc S.A. from Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera. Similarly, he grew the newly acquired supermarket chain by injecting capital, cutting red tape and swallowing various smaller competitors while comprising today more than 200 stores between various formats around the country along with including a small presence in Peru.
To conclude, already ranked as a billionaire today by Forbes, Álvaro Saieh Bendeck is a new and proud member of the Chilean business establishment. In fact, gaining leadership aggressively in strategic sectors in the most developed economy in Latin America, I think this Chilean will keep on growing astonishingly and winning influence. Likewise, spending leisure time on his two foundations including having given money away to the University of Chicago after being his alma mater in America as well as teaching graduate courses on the side, this Chilean is someone to be reckoned with now while having huge potential for even bigger things in the future.