The richest man in Colombia: Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo

Who is Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo?

It's incredible that the richest man in Colombia is hated by the majority of losers in Colombia, but it's a reality.

A genuine, charismatic, and down-to-earth man with 9 billion dollars that he made himself, without inheritances, without leaving Colombia, and studying at a public university in a regular family. It's an achievement.

If making 1 million dollars is difficult for Americans with the best conditions in the world for making money, imagine making 9 billion dollars in a single lifetime, while being in Colombia.

Not only is he wealthy, but he made the country rich. The country largely depends on him. In a country with taxes, guerrilla, drug trafficking, and kidnappings, making that much money is literally a genius move, and it deserves that we tell a part of his story.

He graduated from Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé and started working at the age of 14. He then began studying at the National University at the age of 15, where he graduated as a Civil Engineer.

Later on, he saw the construction industry as an attractive business opportunity and created his first company in that sector at the age of 23.

With the Sarmiento Angulo Organization, the entrepreneur sought to venture into larger contracts for building roads, as he had only managed to get a few projects until then.

Between 1959 and 1972, this entrepreneur experienced exponential growth. In 1972, he decided to buy one of his first banks, Banco de Occidente, which was then in a financially unfavorable situation.

Currently, Sarmiento Angulo has investments in eight sectors of the economy, including energy, hospitality, agribusiness, mining, infrastructure, construction, finance, and media. He has more than 50 well-known brands throughout the country.

At the end of his university studies, he had no capital, so he started working. This was a crucial point, despite his youth, for his future fortune. "What you learn in your first job is the guarantee of the best salary in the future," said Sarmiento Angulo.

With the money he started earning, he started his own company, fully diving into housing construction. Before turning 40, Sarmiento Angulo had become an important businessman in the sector, having built, for example, 40,000 houses in the neighborhoods of Las Villas and Villa del Prado in Bogotá.