To All: Here's an article from the NY Times about a meditator who found cosmic efficiency in Brazil:
Saturday Profile For Wealthy Brazilian, Money From Ore and Might From the Cosmos By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO Published: August 2, 2008 SALVADOR, Brazil Joao Pina for The New York Times "I need to discover new reserves that can generate more wealth, more employment." -- João Carlos Cavalcanti "I AM connected to the divine, to these forces here," João Carlos Cavalcanti, the Brazilian mining magnate, said as he swept an arm out across the lily pad-covered lake behind his $15 million mansion. A gentle breeze rustled through his thick white beard. Mr. Cavalcanti stood on the pier and closed his eyes for a moment. A uniformed servant, one of a staff of 15, hovered nearby with hors d'oeuvres and nonalcoholic drinks. She knew better than to disturb a man who meditates for three hours a day and constantly refers to himself as a "mystical" person who draws strength from "the cosmos" when he is not collecting expensive cars, fine paintings and other playthings. Minutes later, as Mr. Cavalcanti made his way back up the hill, through his Thai- and Indonesian-inspired gardens with Buddhist statues, his cellphone rang. Another banker was calling, this one from Canada, eager to do business with one of Brazil's newest billionaires. Mr. Cavalcanti explained that he had big plans of his own, to form a "world mining bank" with Merrill Lynch and raise capital for exploration projects around the world. This is the life of the nouveau billionaire in Brazil the life that Mr. Cavalcanti said he dreamed of from the age of 9 and from the time he immersed himself in biographies of Henry Ford, John Jacob Astor and John D. Rockefeller. A geologist by training, Mr. Cavalcanti who goes by J.C. applied his knowledge and considerable gumption to discovering huge reserves of iron ore and other minerals. Today he pegs his net worth at $1.2 billion, placing him among the 20 richest men in Brazil. Before this year is out, he vows to have $1 billion in liquid investments, to go with his 39 cars, 10 homes and two airplanes. Mr. Cavalcanti, 59, is a charter member of an emerging mega-rich group in Brazil, whose flourishing economy minted the third most millionaires last year, after India and China, according to a recent study by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, the big consulting firm. He is among the newly wealthy benefiting from Brazil's boom in commodities like soybeans and iron ore. The group includes Eike Batista, a mining and oil exploration entrepreneur who is worth $6.6 billion, according to Forbes. Mr. Batista, a college dropout and former champion powerboat racer, has boasted that he will become Brazil's richest man by next year. Today, the list of Brazil's billionaires still has its bankers and industrialists. Indeed an industrialist, Antônio Ermírio de Moraes, chairman of Votorantim Group, which produces metals, papers, cement and electricity, is reckoned the wealthiest person in South America, with a fortune of some $10 billion. Just behind him is a financier, Joseph Safra, who runs Safra Group, a banking and investment conglomerate. Forbes pegs Mr. Safra at $8.8 billion. Mr. Cavalcanti, the son of a railroad-track laborer, seemed highly unlikely to become a billionaire. He spent his early years in a rustic two-bedroom house in Caculé, a small farming town in Bahia State. At 24, he concluded that Bahia was too small for him, so he left for a consulting job in São Paulo with a German firm. He spent Sundays driving the wealthy neighborhoods, photographing mansions in Morumbi and in Jardim Europa and admiring the BMWs and Porsches in the showrooms. "I always had a vision of what I wanted to have," he said. LATER, he began prospecting on his own for minerals. By 2003, with cash to support his search drying up, he sold a beach house and an apartment to raise investment funds. The gamble paid off in 2004, when he discovered a huge iron ore reserve back home in Bahia. Other geologists had long given up on the area; the giant mining company Vale, which owned a magnesium reserve close by, had missed the iron deposit, Mr. Cavalcanti said. By his telling, he discovered the reserve while driving at night mostly alone in a four-wheel-drive truck, relying on old regional maps dating from 1937. According to mining industry publications, Mr. Cavalcanti later sold the reserve, which contains at least 1.8 billion tons of ore, to an Indian miner, Pramod Agarwal, for some $360 million. He does not dispute the reports. 1 2
