Two Uruguayans entered the Forbes list of the richest people in the world

Forbes magazine published on Tuesday the ranking of the people with the most money in the world in 2022. To that list, two Uruguayans were added who are linked to the rise of fintech. Among this list were the businessmen Andrés Bzurovski Bay and Sergio Fogel, the co-founders of “dLocal”.

This payment processing company became the first Uruguayan unicorn in September 2020 and, with a strong technology base, was worth more than $1 billion, earning it a place on Wall Street. According to Forbes, they each hold 17% of their company's shares.

Individually they accumulate a fortune that reaches 1.5 billion dollars and are ranked 1,929 in the world ranking. For comparison, Argentina has six billionaires, with Marcos Galperín leading with an accumulation of 3.9 billion.

The exchange of dLocal, in 2020, was made under the code DLO (short for dLocal) and through an IPO (public offering for sale). The high demand for shares in the previous day raised the placement price from $16-18, initially expected, to 21 dollars. The company then totaled about $617.4 million and its value was around 6.15 billion, as reported at the opening of the session of Nasdaq, the global online market for buying and trading shares.

The company dLocal was founded in 2016 by Sergio Fogel and Andrés Bzurovski. She currently works with customers such as Amazon, Pinterest, Spotify, Netflix, Zara or Uber. They have more than 300 employees in their offices that are located in Montevideo, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, London, Tel Aviv and Shenzhen. In addition, they deal with operations in 29 countries in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Who are the richest people in the world?

There are 2,668 people in the 36th annual Forbes ranking of the richest people on the planet, one of the most important economic journals. According to their analysis, that means they are 87 fewer than they were a year ago.

In total, they have a collective value of $12.7 trillion, indicating that there are $400 billion less than on the 2021 list. The most serious money drops occurred with the members of the list in Russia, where there are 34 billionaires fewer than last year, after the invasion of Ukraine. The same is true in China, where there are 87 fewer billionaires, because the government took strong measures against technology.

However, Forbes found more than 1,000 billionaires who are richer than they were a year ago. Of these, 236 are new and moved to this category in 2021. This includes persons from Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay.

The ranking ranks Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X) as the richest person on the planet with 219 billion. In second place is Jeff Bezos (Amazon), with 179 billion, and third is Bernard Arnault and his family (LMVH) with 158 billion.

For his part, Bill Gates (Microsoft) ranks fourth with 129 billion and Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) in fifth place, accumulating 118 billion. The analysis also indicates that Françoise Bettencourt Meyers (L'Oreal) is the richest woman on the planet, ranking only 14th on the list, with 74.8 billion.

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