Across the planet, Forbes’ 47 licensed editions span six continents, 80 countries and 30 languages. They all share the same mission: celebrating entrepreneurial capitalism in all its forms.
Latin America’s biggest YouTuber, with 115 million subscribers, is 29-year-old Alejo Igoa, Forbes Argentina notes. From a small town in northeast Argentina, Igoa started making money at age 13 by setting up websites and selling logo designs. Today the college dropout oversees a team of 40 people in Panama who churn out silly, family-friendly videos ranging from making Minecraft characters from Lego-like Minecraft cubes to filming a 20-something crew’s antics during 24 hours on a remote island. Igoa doesn’t disclose his YouTube earnings but says he prefers it to other social media channels partly because of the monetization.
“My father said the only misfortune he had in life was having only two daughters. But it was a stroke of luck for the two daughters, who otherwise wouldn’t have been integrated into the company.”
—Elisabeth Gürtler-Mauthner, 76, explaining to Forbes Austria how she and her sister took over their father’s business when he died in 1988. Two years later, Elisabeth added her ex-husband’s (d. 1990) hotel business to her purview. Now her children run the Sacher Hotels in Vienna and Salzburg and the Sacher Torte Manufactory, while she runs the Alpin Resort Sacher Seefeld-Tirol hotel, which she inherited from her mother.
Keyrock, a cryptocurrency investment firm, raised new funding in March from investors including U.K. bank Standard Chartered’s venture capital arm and U.S.-based crypto firm Ripple, valuing the Brussels-based company at $1.1 billion–and making it Belgium’s eighth unicorn, Forbes Belgium reports. Former strategy consultant Kevin de Patoul, the CEO, cofounded Keyrock in 2017 with two partners. As a market maker, Keyrock buys and sells cryptocurrencies in large quanties, earning money from the spread as well as providing liquidity. Keyrock has operations in seven countries including the U.K, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and the U.S.
Svetlozar Dimitrov quit his bank job in 2012 to get into the logistics business. The company he founded in Ruse, Bulgaria, euShipments, started out shipping goods within the country but grew along with its e-commerce customers, and now has 15 fulfillment centers in 14 countries and delivers all over Europe, writes Forbes Bulgaria. In March, euShipments closed a deal to sell a 70% stake in the firm to Vienna-listed Austrian Post, a logistics and postal service company, for $64 million. Dimitrov, 42, is staying on as CEO.
Colombian food and real estate conglomerate Grupo Alpina spent $136 million in 2021 to acquire 70% of Northern California–based dairy producer Clover Sonoma. Under the leadership of CEO Ernesto Fajardo, revenue of the group, which encompasses eight companies and 60-plus brands, grew 6% last year to nearly $1.1 billion. Today, Forbes Colombia writes, Alpina employs 5,000 people and exports to 15 countries.
A former fixed-income trader at Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking, Djiba Diakité was appointed chief of staff of Guinea’s president, General Mamadi Doumboya, in 2021 after a coup. The Guinea native is now chairman of the Strategic Committee of the country’s gigantic Simandou mine, a project that has cost some $20 billion to tap one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits. Diakité told Forbes Afrique about his success negotiating with the mining partners–U.K. firm Rio Tinto and a consortium of Singaporean and Chinese firms–to gain 15% ownership for Guinea’s government of the railway line built to facilitate exports of the iron ore, which began late last year.
Fernando Chico Pardo founded a stock brokerage firm at age 27 in Mexico City that later merged with billionaire Carlos Slim Helú’s Grupo Financiero Inbursa. He went on to invest in airport management and hotels, and last December bought a 25% stake in Mexican bank Grupo Financiero Banamex from Citigroup for $2.3 billion. Now the bank’s chairman and worth $3.4 billion, Chico Pardo, 74, told Forbes Mexico, “My goal is to transform the bank, regain market share and strengthen its focus on data, technology and service.”
Among spaceflight researchers, a decades-old mystery persists: Where did the Soviet Union’s Luna-9 spacecraft land on the moon in 1966? Russian blogger Vitaliy Egorov has been researching the topic for years; in March he believed he was close to identifying the landing site. He’s still searching, using a combination of satellite imagery and 3D maps, reports Forbes Montenegro. An opponent of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Egorov moved to Montenegro in 2022.
While working for a Swedish engineering firm in his native Peru, Herbert Vilcapoma came up with an idea for a new product: a smaller, lighter drill for mining copper that could improve productivity by 40%. Based on that drill, which he developed after hours, he founded Rock Drill Group in 2000 with his wife, Elizabeth Bravo, a former math and physics teacher who now serves as the company’s chief financial officer, chronicles Forbes Peru. Last year the group had revenue of $72 million from making and repairing drilling equipment and renting out vehicles for underground mining.
Forbes Africa explored how poor residents without bank accounts in two South African townships are learning about Bitcoin via free classes, while local businesses like a restaurant and a pharmacy began accepting the currency as payment. U.S. payments firm Block, cofounded by billionaire Jack Dorsey, donated funding to build a skateboarding bowl dubbed “Bitcoin Bowl” for nonprofit The Surfer Kids, which teaches youngsters how to surf and skate—and, through its offshoot Bitcoin Ekasi, financial skills.