Alejandro Santo Domingo Davila is to continue at the helm of the Grupo Santo Domingo after the death of his father, Colombian billionaire Julio Mario Santo Domingo.
Semana magazine, which interviewed Alejandro a few months ago, described him as a rational, analytical, astute investment banker, and financier who focuses on every detail.
“From my father I learned, among many other things, the importance of focusing on the cash register and liquidity that businesses generate; to be prudent with leverage and to take risks measuring the implications” said Alejandro, who runs the conglomerate alongside his cousins Carlos Alejandro Perez Davila and Felipe Perez Davila.
The second son of Julio Mario Santo Domingo and the first from his marriage to Beatrice Davila has headed the conglomerate since 2005, when he negotiated the sale of Bavaria to Anglo South American company SAB Miller for $7.8 billion.
Alejandro, whose grandfather Mario Santo Domingo was a pioneer of commercial Colombian aviation, studied history at Harvard University and is one of the world’s best-dressed men according to magazine Vanity Fair.
Julio Mario Santo Domingo died October 7 in New York at the age of 87. At the time of his passing he was the second richest man in Colombia and the 108th richest man in the world, with a fortune calculated at $8.5 billion by Forbes.