Jaime Gilinski Bacal is a prominent Jewish Colombian billionaire who got his start in business after obtaining his MBA from Harvard University and then entering the M&A department at Morgan Stanley Corporation on Wall Street in the early 1980s. Grandson of Lithuanian immigrants in Colombia, this Colombian managed to turn a small inherited fortune from a snack food company and a plastic furniture maker into a banking and real estate empire that touches several countries in Latin America and that also includes portfolio investments across Europe managed from his headquarters in London where he resides. In fact, upon returning to his native Colombia after working for Morgan Stanley in the late 1980s, he bought a small distressed Colombian commercial bank and soon after flipped it at a juicy profit allowing him to substantially bolster his war chest. Moreover, the heavy fortune building took a decisive positive turn when he along with Morgan Stanley Corporation, the hedge fund known as Tiger Management Corporation and George Soros bought a commercial state-owned bank the Colombian government decided to privatize comprising the country’s biggest privatization on record then in the early 1990s. After this privatization, he bought other entities in Colombia enabling him to build the largest branch network in the country offering banking services and known nowadays as Grupo Bancolombia S.A.
Furthermore, Jaime Gilinski Bacal along with his father sold his controlling economic interest in Grupo Bancolombia in the late 1990s to a prominent holding group of companies in Colombia known as Grupo Suramericana de Inversiones S.A. for a reported $ 800 million then while retaining a minority 19% shareholding in the business kept yet today. Since then, they bought and merged two small commercial banks in Colombia while renaming the entities as GNB Sudameris S.A. Today, GNB Sudameris has assets that exceed $ 10 billion after acquiring just recently the local units of British banking titan HSBC Holdings PLC in Colombia, Peru and Paraguay for a reported $ 400 million in cash while adding more than 60 branches to a sizable banking network that now numbers around 200 branches dispersed throughout various countries in Latin America. Likewise, this formidable Colombian entrepreneur is deeply involved in real estate development after investing $ 700 million along with the British Livingstone brothers building a massive mastered-planned community in Panama City currently under construction comprising retail, office, hotel, industrial, residential and leisure space on its grounds. Being built on an unused air base operated by the US Air Force back in the day when the US had control of the canal, when finished the project as a whole known as “Panamá Pacífico” is expected to be worth a stunning $ 10 billion while giving direct employment to approximately 40,000 Panamanian nationals.
To conclude, I think Jaime Gilinski Bacal has done a wonderful job exponentially growing inherited wealth. In fact, he is now a prominent Colombian billionaire and jet setting philanthropist who contributes to both Jewish and Colombian causes. Hobnobbing with the likes of George Soros, I’m sure this Colombian still has appetite and muscle to hunt for other prays worldwide like the recent $ 500 million portfolio investment he made last year in the Spanish commercial bank known as Banco de Sabadell S.A.