BUENOS AIRES, FEBRUARY 23, ARMENPRESS: In Argentina the property of the richest people of the country was calculated and the top 5 of the richest men was figured out. The second horizontal of the top 5 has for several years been occupied by the Argentinean Armenian Eduardo Eurnekian. Armenpress reports, citing richestlifestyle that when making the list, the Forbes list and the billionaires’ revenues were taken into account. According to Forbes, Eurnekian takes the 960^th place in the top 1000 of the richest men in the world. 

Through the years, Eduardo Eurnekian, now 81, has proven he is a flexible businessman and entrepreneur. The son of Armenian immigrants, he first delved into the textiles industry, and then the cable TV business in the 1980s. He added to his media portfolio, buying four radio stations, newspapers, and a TV channel by the end of the decade. In the 1990s he offloaded all of his media holdings, netting $750 million with the sale of Cablevision, as a wave of privatization brought capital into Argentina.

Toward the end of the '90s he hit his first jackpot leading a consortium to secure a 30-year concession to build and operate Argentina's airports. Today he has a portfolio of 51 airports with annual revenues that exceed $1.2 billion, including the first privately operated airports in Brazil.

After Argentina's economic crash in late 2001, he bought assets through his Corporacion America holding company, which now owns more than 260,000 acres of land dedicated to crops, cattle, and vineyards. Corporacion America also owns an infrastructure development company, oil and gas producer, a chip factory called Unitech Blue (in which Eurnekian has already invested $250 million), a biodiesel production facility, and land in Armenia used for fruit production and wine.

In 2011 he sold 21 duty free shops in Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Martinique, and Armenia to Switzerland's Dufry AG for $957 million. He has never married and has no children. His numerous nieces and nephews will inherit his companies. Among the family members who work with him are Martin and Hugo Eurnekian, sons of his deceased brother Alberto. Martin is the president of Puerta del Sol, the company that manages the group's airport business in Uruguay. Hugo leads the biggest challenge America Corporation faces in the next decade, the construction of a tunnel passing through the Andes called Bioceanico Aconcagua, in which it plans to invest more than $3 billion.