Carlos Slim heads a conglomorate that spans telecommunications (America Movil, Telmex and more), retail, energy and more.
Viktor Klima, head of VW South America
The 100 most powerful men and women in Latin American business.
BY CHRONICLE STAFF
While Latin America’s presidents and politicians make policy, a select group of business men and women may have an even larger impact on the region’s economies.
The editorial staff of Latin Business Chronicle has selected 100 of them to be included in our first annual LBC Power 100 ranking of Latin America’s most powerful men and women in business. The group includes natives of Latin America as well as foreign executives who have a significant impact on the region, supervising companies that are among the top tax payers and employers in several countries in the region.
That means the list includes people like Jean Marc Pueyo, who heads up South America operations for France-basedCarrefour (the world’s second-largest retailer) and Viktor Klima, head of Volkswagen South America.
The list also includes many public-sector company CEO’s, including the new head of Mexico's Pemex, Juan José Suárez Coppel, and the powerful president of Venezuela's PDVSA, Rafael Ramirez.
The LBC 100 also includes people that are influential locally in a given country, but not necessarily regionally. For example, Dionisio Romero Paoletti – the head of several Peruvian companies, who wields enormous influence in his home country, yet is little known outside of Peru.
We have not ranked the LBC Power 100 internally, but clearly some have more pan-regional power than others. Of these, we have selected the top ten most powerful pan-regionally. That list includes people like Maureen Kempston Darkes, president of General Motors’ Latin America, Africa and Middle East division and José María Álvarez-Pallete, general manager for Latin America for Spain-based Telefonica.
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