Honorario Conquistadores

John Jacob Astor (1763-1848)

John Jacob Astor was born in Waldorf, Germany in 1763 and emigrated to the New World at the close of the Revolutionary War, when he was 21. He arrived in Baltimore, penniless, but was shrewd and ambitious. His American Fur Company created the first American monopoly on the fur trade in U.S. territories. By 1810, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to invest all his surplus money in New York real estate, buying up lots in the desolate northern part of Manhattan and gambling that the growing city would catch up.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos (1964-)

Jeff Bezos was born Cotulla, Texas but moved to Miami, Florida while he was in high school. He attended Princeton University and then went work on Wall Street at DE Shaw & Co. In 1994, Jeff moved to Seattle, Washington and founded Amazon.com after doing research decide on the ideal internet startup and his personal wealth grew in proportion to the success of that company. In 1999 he was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year.

Richard Branson (1950-)

Richard Charles Nicholas Branson was born in Shamley Green, England. He is best known for his Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organizations. An entrepreneur it seemed since birth having started two failed ventures by the age 15, a christmas tree growing business and pigeon raising farm. Surprisingly, Richard wasn't a very good student, suffering from dyslexia and a general curious spirit, a serious athletic injury, Richard being the captain of his Football and Cricket teams, would help launch Richard's illustrious career. At age 16, Richard decided to quit school and move to London. There he began his first successful entrepreneurial activities setting up Student Magazine. When he was 17, he opened a Student Advisory Centre, his first charity institution. Branson set up a record mail order business in 1970, started a record shop in Oxford Street, London shortly afterwards, and then in 1972 the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell, opening a recording studio. He formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000. Branson has been tagged as a 'transformational leader' by management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that's bottom heavy rather than strangled by top-level management.

Warren Edward Buffet (1930-)

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His father Howard Buffett was a stockbroker and member of Congress. Buffett returned to Omaha in 1957 and started his own investment partnership, putting in his own money and raising additional investments from friends and family. By 1969, he had returned an average of almost 30% a year, in a market where 7% to 11% is the norm and anything more is outstanding. Contrary to popular understanding, Buffet is not merely an extraordinary passive investor. His primary strategy has been to acquire and actively transform underperforming companies.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland and emigrated to America in 1848. Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry. His great innovation was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel rails for railroad lines. In 1901, he sold his steel holdings to a group of New York-based financiers led by J.P. Morgan for $250 million. The buyout, which was negotiated in secret by Charles M. Schwab, was the largest such industrial takeover in the United States at the time. His former holdings were consolidated as U.S. Steel. Besides steel, Carnegie's companies were involved in other areas of the railroad industry. His company Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works was noted for its building of large locomotives at the turn of the 20th century.

Lawrence J. Ellison (1944-)

Larry Ellison is the founder and CEO of the major database software firm Oracle Corporation. Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems named A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. He founded Oracle in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories, later to be renamed Oracle after the flagship product Oracle database.

William Henry Gates III (1955-)

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington. While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 in the mid 1970s. The Altair was the first commercially successful personal computer. Inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes, Gates' and Allen's version of BASIC later became Microsoft BASIC, the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, which was the key to Microsoft's early commercial success. Microsoft Basic became Microsoft QuickBasic. When released without a compiler it is known as QBasic. QuickBasic evolved into Visual Basic, versions of which are still popular today. Gates went on to co-found Microsoft Corporation, one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and led the way toward the emergence of the commercial software industry.

John Paul Getty (1892-1976)

John Paul Getty was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company. Getty was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, into a family already in the petroleum business. By some calculations, he was one of the first people in the world with a fortune of over $1 billion U.S. dollars.

Stephen Girard (1750-1831)

Stephen Girard, born in Bordeaux, France went to sea and at the age of 23 became a merchant ship captain. In 1776 he settled in Philadelphia as a shipowner and merchant. He became wealthy and interested himself in the Bank of the United States. When its charter was not renewed, he set up his own bank in Philadelphia.

Carl Celian Icahn (1936-)

Icahn, raised in Queens, New York City, earned a reputation as a corporate raider after his hostile takeover of TWA in 1985. He was educated at Princeton University (BA) and New York University School of Medicine, where he dropped out before graduation. Carl Icahn made his billionaire fortune in the 1980s utilizing financier Michael Milken's junk bonds. Icahn is a director of Blockbuster Inc and the chairman of American Real Estate Partners LP, XO Communications Inc and American Railcar. Also he is a beneficial owner of Adventrx Pharmaceuticals Inc, Hollywood Entertainment, National Energy Group Inc, Vector Group Ltd and has significant holdings in Time Warner Inc. He has casino interests in Las Vegas, Nevada, including the Stratosphere, Arizona Charlie's Boulder and Arizona Charlie's Decatur, which are operated through American Entertainment Properties, a subsidary of Icahn's major company American Real Estate Partners. Icahn has also tried to take over Marvel Comics.

Ingvar Kamprad (1926-)

Ingvar began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Ingvar was 17, his father gave him a gift for succeeding in his studies. He used this gift to establish what has grown into IKEA.

Li Ka Shing (1928-)

Li Ka Shing was born in Chaozhou in the Guangdong Province, China in 1928. He is well known for his no-frills lifestyle, such as wearing cheap shoes and old watches. He also lacks a corporate jet or other luxurious amenities. It is also believed he has close ties with the PRC government and the senior officals, especially Jiang Zemin. In 1940, the Li family fled to Hong Kong as the Japanese invaded China. After getting his first job as a watch strap salesman, he became a wholesale salesman at age 17, and a general manager at age 19. In 1949, he founded a plastics company in Hong Kong, and was known for making a fortune in plastic flowers. In 1958, he made his first move into real estate and by 1971, had created Cheung Kong Real Estate Company, named after the Cheung Kong (or Chang Jiang)-the longest river in China. That company would eventually acquire Hutchison Whampoa Limited in 1979 and Hongkong Electric Holdings Limited in 1985, creating a massive conglomerate in multiple industries.

Lakshmi Narayan Mittal (1950-)

Lakshmi Narayan Mittal (also known as Lakshmi Niwas Mittal) is a billionaire industrialist, born on 15 June 1950 in Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, India, and residing in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, UK. As of 2005 he was ranked the 3rd richest man in the world with a worth of $25 billion. He grew up in a poor family in Sadulpur, living with his extended family on bare concrete floors and rope beds in a house built by his grandfather. His family, from the Marwari merchant caste, was not prestigious. They eventually moved to Kolkata where his father, Mohan, became a partner in a steel company. Lakshmi graduated from St. Xavier's College in Kolkata with a business degree in 1969. His classmates knew him as a sharp student who was good with numbers. In 1994, due to differences with his father and brothers, he branched out on his own, taking over the international operations of the Mittal steel business. Today he is chairman and CEO of the Mittal Steel Company NV, which is the world's largest producer of steel, with steel assets in Romania, Bosnia- Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the United States, Ukraine and other countries. He was the Fortune European Businessman of the Year for 2004.

John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913)

John Pierpont Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1857-1860 he worked in the New York City banking house of Duncan, Sherman & Co.; from 1860 to 1864 was agent and attorney in New York for George Peabody & Co. of London, and afterwards for its successor, J. S. Morgan & Co., of which he became head; in 1864-1871 was a member of the firm of Dabney, Morgan & Co.; and in 1871 he entered the firm of Drexel, Morgan & Co., in which he was associated with Anthony J. Drexel, of Philadelphia, upon whose death in 1893 he became senior partner. In 1895 the firm became J. P. Morgan & Co. Closely associated with Drexel & Co. of Philadelphia, Morgan, Harjes & Co. (successors to Drexel, Harjes & Co.) of Paris, and, Morgan, Grenfell & Co. (before 1910 J. S. Morgan & Co.) of London, it became one of the most powerful banking houses in the world. Its accomplishments were numerous. It financed the formation of the United States Steel Corporation, which took over the business of Andrew Carnegie and others and was the world's first billion-dollar corporation. In 1895 it supplied the United States government with $62 million in gold to float a bond issue and restore the treasury surplus of $100 million. In 1902, it purchased the Leyland line of Atlantic steamships and other British lines, creating an Atlantic shipping combine. And it, or the banking houses which it succeeded, reorganized a large number of railroads between the years of 1869 and 1899.

Ross Perot (1930-)

Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas. He entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949. By the time he graduated in 1953 he was president of his class and battalion commander. By late 1954, Perot was made a lieutenant, junior grade. However, in 1955, Perot expressed great discontent with his life in the Navy in a letter to his father. He quietly served the remainder of his four-year commitment and was discharged. Ross married Margot Birminham of Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1956. Over the years they had five children (Ross Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine). As of 2002, the Perots have nine grandchildren. When he left the navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for International Business Machines (IBM). He quickly became a top employee and tried to pitch his ideas to supervisors who largely ignored him. He left IBM in 1962 to found EDS in Dallas, Texas and courted large corporations for his data processing services. Perot received lucrative contracts from the U.S. government in the 1960s, computerizing Medicare records. EDS went public in 1968 and the stock price shot up from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune magazine called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story. In 1984, General Motors bought EDS for $2.4 billion.

John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937)

John Davison Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York. After 1857 he lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he had begun to work as a bookkeeper in 1855. In 1858 he went into the produce commission business. His firm, Clark & Rockefeller, invested in an oil refinery in 1862, and in 1865 Rockefeller sold out his share to his partner Clark, paid $72,500 for a larger share in another refinery, and formed the partnership of Rockefeller & Andrews. At about the same time Rockefeller's brother, William, started another refinery. In 1867 Rockefeller & Andrews absorbed this business, and Henry M. Flagler joined the partnership. In 1870 the two Rockefellers, Flagler, Andrews and a refiner named Stephen V. Harkness formed the Standard Oil Company, with John D. Rockefeller as president. Standard Oil gradually gained virtual control of oil production in America. Its business methods, which brought immense wealth to the ownership, were widely and severely criticized. Its growth increased further in 1882, when separate companies were organized in each state; and in later years, as the first great American trust, the Standard Oil Company was hotly attacked during the anti-trust movement, especially after the publication of the 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida Tarbell. Standard Oil's economies of scale lowered the cost of oil based products so that almost everyone could afford them.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812)

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in the ghetto of Frankfurt-am-Main. He developed a finance house and spread his empire by installing each of his five sons in European cities to conduct business. Mayer Rothschild successfully kept the fortune in the family by carefully arranged marriages between closely related family members. Rothschild family banking businesses pioneered international high finance during the industrialization of Europe and were instrumental in supporting railway systems across the world and in complex government finance for projects such as the Suez Canal.

George Soros (1930-)

George Soros was born in Hungary and lived there until 1946, when he escaped the Soviet occupation by participating in an Esperanto youth congress in the West. (Soros was taught to speak the language from birth.) As a young man, Soros traded currencies in the black market during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. On September 22, 1992, Soros became instantly famous when, believing the Pound Sterling was overvalued, he speculated aggressively against it. The Bank of England was forced to withdraw the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and Soros earned an estimated US$1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, under similar circumstances during the Asian financial crisis, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of bringing down the Malaysian currency, the ringgit.

Alexander Turney Stewart (1803-1876)

Alexander Turney Stewart was born, of Scotch descent, at Lisburn, near Belfast, Ireland, on the 12th of October 1803. He emigrated to New York in 1823, and in 1825 opened a small dry goods store In 1848 he built at the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway a store which became the wholesale department upon the completion in 1862 of the large store on Broadway between Ninth and Tenth Streets. The business grew to enormous proportions for those days, with foreign branches in Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow, Berlin, Paris and Lyons.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877)

As a boy Cornelius Vanderbilt ferried freight and passengers from Staten Island to Manhattan, and he soon gained control of most of the ferry lines and other short lines in the vicinity of New York City. He further expanded his shipping lines and came to be known as Commodore Vanderbilt. In 1851, when the gold rush to California was at its height, Vanderbilt opened a shipping line from the East Coast to California, including land transit across Nicaragua along the route of the proposed Nicaragua Canal. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he entered the railroad field, and by 1867 he had gained control of the New York Central RR. Although his efforts to gain control of the Erie RR proved unsuccessful, Vanderbilt vastly expanded his railroad empire and by 1873 connected Chicago with New York City by rail.

Sam Walton (1918-1992)

Growing up during the Great Depression, Walton had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver newspapers on a paper route. Upon graduating, he was voted "Most Versatile Boy." In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton decided he wanted to own a department store. With some help from his father-in-law with a loan of $20,000, plus $5000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a store in Newport, Arkansas. The store was a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain. It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that would prove to be crucial to his success. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods at low prices. His store also stayed open later than most other stores, especially during the Christmas season. He also pioneered the practice of discount merchandizing by buying goods wholesale. This allowed him to buy goods at a lower price, which he passed on to his customers, which drove up his sales volume, which allowed him to negotiate even lower purchase prices with the wholesaler on subsequent purchases. All of these concepts were novel at the time, but Walton put them to practice and the success of his store proved them correct. Due to his innovative approaches, Walton's store led in sales and profits in the Butler Brothers six-state region. The first true Wal-Mart opened in 1962 and in 1991 became the world's largest retailer. Currently more than 1.5 million people work for the Wal-Mart corporation. Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest man in the United States from 1985 to 1988, ceding the top spot to John Kluge in 1989 only because the editors began to credit Walton's fortune jointly to him and his four children.

Sat Sep 04 20:24:39 PDT 2010