Invest Like A Billionaire - Sam Zell Likes Brazil as an Investment

(May 2008) - Billionaire Sam Zell, known for his real estate and media investments, went on record as saying that Brazil is his choice for new investment. Zell, Chief Executive of Chicago Tribune parent, The Tribune Co, and Chairman and President of Equity Group Investments LLC, was responding to a moderator's question on what single investment panellists would make in real estate.

At the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Zell said that Brazil will be the next China, according to several news reports including one from Reuters.

"I'd buy Brazil," Zell told his audience at the Conference. "It has the chance 30 years from now of being a bigger economic power than China." Zell also said the South American nation's large population of 180 million people, highly-trained work force, and array of crops and natural resources has made it largely self-sufficient.

Furthermore, he highlighted annual increases in retail spending as an indicator of its growing economic prosperity. As one example of how Brazil is performing, Zell noted that Brazil’s largest mall operator, ECISA, was seeing retail sales grow 10% annually. Equity International, the private equity firm affiliated with Sam Zell's Equity Group Investments, LLC, recently invested $44.5 million in the ECISA Group ("ECISA").

Brazil's economy has grown for five consecutive years, and gross domestic product rose 5.4% in 2007, the fastest rate in three years. It was led by a surge in investments by companies in new machinery and by consumer demand.

In another sign of how things are going in Brazil, the country’s stock market, the Bovespa, recently claimed the lead as the fastest growing equity market in the world in recent years.

“Brazil is on the radar screen of global investors right now,'' said Simon Nocera, a former manager at Soros Fund Management LLC and co-founder of San Francisco-based hedge fund Lumen Advisors LLC, which added to Brazil holdings recently.

The Bovespa was the best performing index among the biggest markets during the first two months of 2008 as the commodity boom boosted shares of steelmakers and sugar processors such as Gerdau SA and Cosan SA Industria e Comercio.

Please click on the link for more information about overseas investment property in Brazil

Middle East NewsAfrica NewsCaribbean, South and Central America NewsNorth America NewsEurope NewsAsia News