Of Carlos Slim in FCC, realia and Real Oviedo to Bill Gates with Microsoft and now Elon Musk with Tesla in Valencia. Millionaires bet on investing in Spain. This same Thursday the news broke. The company led by the also owner of Twitter maintains contacts with the Generalitat Valenciana to carry out an investment higher than the €4.5 billion in the region. His proposal that Spain build “a massive solar array” to become one of Europe’s largest energy exporters also caused a lot of talk. But Musk It is not the first nor the only great fortune to bet on our country.
The Mexican Carlos Slim is one of the major foreign investors in Spain. One of the richest men in the world, with a fortune that exceeds 70,000 million, has several relevant positions in our country. The first big move was in 2015, when he joined the Koplowitz to resurrect the construction company FCC with an injection close to 1,500 million euros. It’s not the only one. In 2012 she also came to the rescue of the soccer team Real Oviedo by the hand of his son-in-law, Arturo Elías Ayub.
In the real estate business, it is present in realia and now it has also launched for Metrovacesa. The objective of the Mexican tycoon, who already has 20.24% of the capital, is to exceed 50%. At current prices, a takeover bid for 100% of the real estate company would amount to 867.39 million euros.
The Bill Gates case
In 2013, Bill Gates made his first investment in Spain by buying 6% of FCC, where he lost half his investment. The co-founder of Microsoft paid 113.5 million euros for the stake that it sold three years later for just over 57 million through its Cascade and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation vehicles. The American tycoon became the second largest shareholder in the construction company, only behind Esther Koplowitz, who controlled 53.9%. Gates’ relationship with FCC began at a time when the company’s CEO, Juan Béjar, wanted to promote a new strategic plan. The owner of Microsoft now has the vast majority of his assets in the foundation that he manages with his ex-wife Belinda, and to which he has donated a good part of his fortune during his lifetime.
George Soros also decided to bet on the Spanish construction company in the past and looked at several more companies. Thus, the tycoon also participated in the IPOs of Aena, Cellnex and Euskaltel. In addition, he attended the debut of the Socimi Hispania and became a shareholder in Endesa, Iberdrola, Liberbank, Bankia and Santander, in one of their capital increases.
Jeff Bezos
For his part, Jeff Bezos, who in 2022 managed to amass a fortune of 171,000 million dollars, also has strong investments in Spain through Amazon. Another of the richest men in the world, with Valladolid roots, launched in 2022 Amazon Web Services, its data region in Spain, after two years of construction and a billion-dollar investment. The three AWS Availability Zones in Aragon, built from scratch, they imply an investment of 2,500 million euros in ten years.
Just the day he announced his departure as CEO of Amazon, his revolutionary concept of food delivery also landed in our country: Amazon Fresh. A delivery service for groceries and other products that competes directly with the main supermarket chains present in the country such as Mercadona, El Corte Inglés, Aldi or Carrefour.
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From Slim to Gates and now Musk: millionaires bet on investing in Spain