Jorge Paulo Lemann

The beer baron is now also a burger king. Together with his former investment banking partners (and fellow Brazilian billionaires) Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, Lemann bought Burger King Holdings for $4 billion last year. Lemann is also among the largest shareholders of Anheuser-Busch Inbev, the world's biggest brewer. The group was formed in Nov. 2008 when Inbev acquired Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion. The Brazilian trio also controls retailer Lojas Americanas. Lemann's first big success was at investment bank Banco Garantia, which he founded 1971 and sold to Credit Suisse First Boston in 1998 for $675 million. Lemann has generously supported cross-cultural initiatives at Harvard University, including the Brazil Studies Program and Brazil Office of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), for over a decade. He established the Lemann Visiting Scholars program and, more recently, the Lemann Fellows program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Harvard Kennedy School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In business, Lemann is one of the controlling shareholders of Anheuser-Busch Inbev (ABI), the world’s biggest brewer, formed when Inbev acquired Anheuser-Busch in November 2008. He shares control of the brewer with his former investment banking partners Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, as well as with the Belgian families that controlled Inbev’s predecessor, Interbrew. The Lemann-Telles-Sicupira trio, which also controls Brazilian retailer Lojas Americanas, has played a central role in fostering entrepreneurship and meritocracy in Brazil and globally. Lemann enjoys tennis and played at Wimbeldon and in the Davis Cup. He received a bachelor's degree in Economics from Harvard College, 1961.