#5 Iris Fontbona
Iris Fontbona (pictured) is the widow of Andronico Luksic and her wealth stems from the copper giant Antofagasta. According to Forbes she and her family is worth $17.8 billion, number 32 on the 2012 list of billionaires and the richest people in Chile.
In 1980 Luksic, of Croation origin, bought control of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Company, a company incorporated in London, UK in the 19th century.
Over decades Luksic built Antofagasta into one of the biggest (and lowest cost) copper miners in the world starting with Los Pelambres and El Tesoro in Chile, expanding the railway operations and also moving into banking.
Today Antofagasta’s flagship is the copper and gold Esperanza mine in Chile and the company has exploration and mining ventures in Europe, Turkey, Australia, Africa and across the Americas and annual revenues of $4.5 billion.
He married his second wife Iris in 1961 and he died in 2005. He had two daughters and a son Jean Paul, who is chairman of Antofagasta, with Iris.
Forbes reports “during a December 2011 telethon, the usually press-averse Fontbona publicly donated $3 million to help Chileans with disabilities.”
The image is a still taken from a video of that event. $3 million translates to around 0.017% of the family’s wealth.
#6 Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez
Forbes estimates Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez and his family‘s fortune at $16.5 billion, ranking him as the 38th richest person in the world.
He is Mexico’s third richest man behind Carlos Slim ($69 billion strong mobile phone king and richest man in the world) and retail and media mogul Ricardo Salinas Pliego whose pesos stack up to 17.4 billion USD.
Gonzalez’s wealth is largely thanks to his 69% shareholding in Industrias Penoles, which controls Fresnillo, the world’s largest primary silver mining company and a number of other silver and gold mines in Latin America.
The Gonzales family has added more than $10 billion to their stash since 2009 and it is not likely that they will stop accumulating cash – Penoles this month announced a 63% bump in 2011 profits to $1.5 billion.
Forbes says the 80-year old who sits on a number of boards including a Coca-Cola distributor is a fan of bullfighting.
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