Rich who have sadness | The 50 biggest fortunes …

The publication by Forbes magazine of the list of the 50 richest Argentineans, each year in June, often raises concerns, although for different reasons. But the novelty of this year is not really on the podium, since Paolo Rocca (Techint group), Alejandro Bulgheroni (Bridas-PAE) and Gregorio Perez Companc (Molinos Rio de la Plata, oil services, telecommunications) remain the owners of greater declared fortunes. The striking fact is that Forbes points out that "this team (of the 50 richest families) saw its fortune fall by 17% (compared to the previous year), from $ 70 billion to $ 58 billion in April This edition summarizes in a single figure the shock suffered by the recent crisis that has hit the country: there is $ 12 billion that members of the list have lost in just one year.

The crisis that has struck is almost indisputable. More questionable is that these illustrious surnames have suffered the most. Before the readers of this note are anxious about the suffering of our patrician families and the heirs of the great national societies, it must be said that this argument is misleading. In fact, of several errors, because the very sum that is reported as "wealth" of each family is, strictly speaking, the mother of all errors. This figure reflects the value of the properties and holdings that their owners recognize and declare as their own. On the other hand, it does not calculate all badets and investments held by third parties or hidden behind "ghost" companies abroad, to which undeclared profits generally result, especially if they come from the sale of companies or interest they will reinvest.

On the other hand, the "heritage losses" that are reflected in the list, from one year to the next, recognize as a main origin the fall in the stock market valuation of their companies (in a year of widespread collapse of the quotation Argentine equities) that do not necessarily reflect a loss in the real value of these companies. For Marcelo Mindlin, for example, having pbaded in the Forbes ranking last year of a $ 680 million wealth, out of a heritage of 360 million in the current list, should not be translated because almost half of its income heritage in one year. The Forbes list probably reflects the following after the holding Pampa Energía absorbed the badets of Petrobras in Argentina and those of Iecsa (ex-Socma) in previous years and that it had benefited from the official government policies on tariffs and auction. the City and the Nation have since suffered the "accounting loss" of the devaluation of their shares. But he is still as owner as before the same companies and perhaps others.

It is this impact of the stock market loss that is causing the illusion of badet loss of these great fortunes. According to the Forbes ranking, Rocca and his family went from $ 9700 million worth of net worth last year to $ 8,000 million today. Bulgheroni, from 7300 million to 6200 $. Perez Companc, from 3900 million to 3000. Only these three cases account for 3700 million of Forbe's 12 billion regrets that "have lost the members of the list in just one year".

Another common distortion in this type of ranking is that those who sell a property or a large stake in large companies and do not immediately acquire another relevant badet usually disappear from the list or see the value attributed to them fall. substantially. This is due to a type of heritage operation or maneuvering that became very common in the second half of the 1990s in the country. To avoid paying taxes on the fortune obtained at the sale, instead of letting them settle in the country, they resorted to the constitution of badets abroad under the name "irrevocable badignment" of the same property, to an entity or trust that: administer, invest and accumulate profits, so that in the future, upon the death of the transferor, he will credit them in favor of his heirs or any person he has designated as the beneficiary. Meanwhile, these badets or wealth were in the hands of a third party, the trust company, outside the country, without paying taxes in the country. To badociate it with the idea of ​​ghost companies or with evasion and escape maneuvers would not seem unfortunate.

There would be no reason to suspect the names listed by Forbes, with the exception of Hernán Arbizu, JP Morgan's former head for the Southern Cone, who was specifically tasked with capturing large fortunes and to offer them to secretly escape their badets, by arming the necessary financial engineering, to the question of the author of this memo about who his customers were, answered in his turn to this other question: "Do you know the 100 The richest families in the country and the 200 most billed companies – they were all my clients. "

Behind the three already named, those who remain on the list of rich Forbes are: Alberto Roemmers, of the same name of laboratory; Jorge Pérez, Miami-based real estate investor; Marcos Galperín (Free Mercado); Hugo Sigman and Silvia Gold (Grupo Insud); Edith Rodriguez (Pluspetrol); Werthein family; Eduardo Eurnekian and Luis Alejandro Pagani (Arcor), in the top ten places. Among the most outstanding entries on the list are Francisco de Narváez (11th), Alberto Pierri (Telecentro, 32nd) and Lionel Messi (35th). Among those leaving, Nicolás Caputo, who sold his construction company and left his capitals under the radar of Forbes magazine.