Eike Batista

Eike Fuhrken Batista da Silva is a Brazilian business manager who made a fortune working with mining and oil and gas exploration. Actually, he is the CEO of EBX Group that includes five companies on the BM&F BOVESPA, stock exchange located at Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Batista started elementary school in Brazil and moved with his family to Europe when he was a teenager. He learned self-esteem and discipline, attributes he considers crucial to his formation as an entrepreneur. In 1974, he began to study metallurgical engineering in Germany and in early the 1980s he returned to Brazil and focused his attention on the gold and diamond trades.

When he was 23 years old, he started a gold trading company, that a year and a half later had earned $6 million. With his entrepreneurial instinct and talent, he implement the first mechanized alluvial gold mining plant in the Amazon and when he was 29 years old, he became CEO of TVX Gold. From 1980 to 2000, he created $20 billion in value with the operation of eight gold mines in Brazil and Canada and a silver mine in Chile. Between 1991 and 1996, the value of his company more than tripled. At the end of 2010, Batista was ranked as the 58th most powerful person in the world. In 2012, Batista had a net worth of $30 billion, becoming a seventh wealthiest person in the world and the richest in Brazil and South America.