Billionaires 'nobody knows' uncovered with public wealth

NEW YORK. January 19. KAZINFORM Not long after Juan Gallardo Thurlow took over PepsiCo Inc. (PEP)'s Mexican bottling and distribution operations in 2011, the shares of his soft-drinks company, Organizacion Cultiba SAB, reached 28 pesos per share -- making him a billionaire.

With 72 percent of mexico City-based Cultiba, Gallardo Thurlow, 65, is worth at least $1.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He's one of eight low-profile individuals from Latin America and Spain whose 10-figure fortunes were revealed in a review of publicly traded company stakes. None has appeared on an international wealth ranking.

"You see these people walking around New York and almost nobody knows who they are," said Eric Saucedo, a partner at the New York-based merchant-banking firm Tricap Partners & Co. "In Latin America, the reality is that there are still safety issues."

Gallardo Thurlow first won the rights to bottle Pepsi products in 1986. Amid a wave of privatizations in the years that followed, he bought a handful of sugar plantations from the Mexican government to bolster his operations. In the early 1990s, he was tapped to help lead the negotiations that forged the North American Free Trade Agreement, working behind the scenes to represent Mexico's private sector, Kazinform cites Bloomberg.

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