The victory of a conservative candidate in the first round of Chile’s presidential elections is giving some of the country’s wealthiest families a breather after two years of political turbulence.
This is the case of the billionaire of the retail and real estate sector Horst Paulmann. Shares in Chilean retail company Cencosud SA, which his family owns 53%, rose 15% on Monday, one of the best-performing in the country’s benchmark.
That increased the fortune of the Paulmann by $ 336 million in the span of a few hours, to a total of $ 2.74 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The wealth of another Chilean retail entrepreneur, Alvaro Saieh, also benefited from the elections since SMU SA it rose a record 20%, leading the index’s gains, which posted its best day in 13 years.
This may offer some relief to Saieh, which in June saw one of its companies file for Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law after the poor results of its banking business. Saieh’s stake in SMU is valued at about $ 353 million.
In the wake of the 2019 anti-government protests, Chileans moved away from conventional parties and politics and entrusted the drafting of a new constitution to a convention of largely independent and left-wing representatives. That hit local capital markets hard as investors transferred their money to safer jurisdictions. Paulmann’s Costanera Center shopping center was one of the targets of the protests.
But many Chileans grew weary of the unrest, leading to the conservative candidate José Antonio Kast’s victory in the first round and the right wing gaining control of half the Senate.
The results reduce the chances that the left will modify a free market economic model, even if the leftist Gabriel Boric wins the closet in a runoff next month.
On Monday, investors returned to betting on Chilean stocks, making Ipsa the best performing global index. The gain of Cencosud erased the losses accumulated previously in the year, while high school reduced losses in 2021 to 8.4%.
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