![Eduardo Costantini, chairman and chief executive officer of Consultatio SA, says its not nice being called a billionaire.](/content/dam/images/g/s/4/z/p/r/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gs4yxm.png/1477215208491.jpg)
Argentina has just created another property billionaire. And he isn't sure it'll last.
Eduardo Costantini, the majority shareholder of Consultatio SA, has a net worth of $US1 billion ($1.31bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after shares of the nation's biggest publicly traded real estate company more than doubled in the past year.
"It's not nice to be named as a billionaire," Costantini, 70, said over cups of espresso at his office in the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, or Malba, which he founded in 2001. "What if your stock is down 50 per cent and you are no longer a billionaire?"
Costantini has benefited as the Merval index has jumped 59 per cent in 12 months, with investors embracing the finance-friendly policies of President Mauricio Macri.
At the same time, Costantini said, the gains may be fleeting. Argentina is in a recession. Costantini points to neighbouring Brazil, where prominent fortunes have declined as Latin America's largest economy struggles to move past a political crisis that resulted in the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
Early Fortune
Costantini, whose passions include kite surfing as well as collecting art, scored his first big deal when he used profits from stock market trading in the 1970s to buy a plot of land and quadrupled his money in a few months. He then set up a brokerage firm, Consultatio, in 1980, and scored millions more by cashing out on an investment in publicly traded Banco Frances. After selling out of the lender, he began making real estate investments, building several Buenos Aires towers and Nordelta, a gated community 30 kilometres north of the city that houses 30,000 people.
He also has a 45 per cent stake in the holding company for Consultatio's US projects, including Oceana Bal Harbour, the $1.3 billion luxury mega resort in Miami that's nearing completion. In Uruguay, he built a controversial circular bridge designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, that guarantees to bring a development boom to his corner of the beach near the chic resort town of Punta del Este.
The risks of building mega fortunes in Latin America's most volatile economies aren't easy to ignore. A realist painting that hangs at the Malba is a reminder for the museum's visitors of the destitution that Argentina has faced. Painted in 1934, Antonio Berni's Manifestacion portrays the faces of dozens of weary Argentines protesting hunger and unemployment.
Despite his reservations, Costantini does seem bemused by the prospect of reaching the top of the economic pyramid, even if he suspects it may be ephemeral. Asked how it feels to be so rich, he giggles, and after an hour talking about art, kite surfing and how he amassed his wealth, waits for his press adviser to step out of hearing range before reaching out enthusiastically for the hand of his guest.
"So, I'm a billionaire?" he said, grinning widely.
Bloomberg