Brazilian Whacks: Eike Batista and Brazil's Unfulfilled Potential
Ex-billionaire Eike Batista’cars, boats and more are headed to the auction block.
Eike Fuhrken Batista da Silva is a Brazilian business magnate who made and lost a fortune in mining and oil and gas exploration. Presently, he is the chairman of Brazilian conglomerate EBX Group.
“BRAZIL IS THE COUTY of the future-and always will be” That old jape about the South American giant’s perpetually unfulfilled potential has assumed corporeal form in the person of Eike Batista. Just five years ago the founder of oil-and-gas driller OGX had a personal fortune estimated at $27 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the world.
Brazil discovered what it thought was a treasure trove of offshore oil in 2007, but those fields have never delivered on their initial promise. In 2010 Batista scolded FORBES for raising questions about his company’s fundamentals. “Let me tell you,” he said, “OGX is zero percent speculation.”
In October 2013 OGX filed for bankruptcy protection with $5.1 billion in total debt; Batista has since been snared in a insider-trading investigation.
Batista, who once predicted he’d be the world’s richest man by 2015, is now deeply in debt.