Eduardo Elsztain (born January 26, 1960) is a prominent Argentine businessman.
Eduardo Sergio Elsztain was born in Buenos Aires in 1960. His grandfather, Isaac Elsztain, had founded Inversiones y Representaciones S.A. ("Investments and Brokerage, Inc," or, IRSA) in 1943 as an independent realty. The younger Elsztain graduated from the Buenos Aires National College, a prestigious public secondary school, and enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires School of Economics, though he dropped out in 1981 to join his grandfather's firm (which was struggling at the time).
Elsztain purchased the family firm for US$120,000 through a partnership with fellow Argentine Jew Marcelo Mindlin. A stay in New York in 1989-90 had introduced him to George Soros, and the international financier became a leading investor in IRSA. The partnership with Soros became profitable for both parties, as the Argentine economy recovered during the 1990s from the severe stagflation of the previous decade. IRSA entered the international equity markets with Soros' backing in 1994, allowing it to enter the nation's lucrative agricultural sector by purchasing Cresud, a leading landowner of prime pampas agricultural land, in 1994.[1] IRSA became a leading local real estate development firm during the 1990s, purchasing 13 up-market Buenos Aires office buildings and a leading local shopping mall developer, Alto Palermo S.A. (APSA). Through APSA, the group purchased Buenos Aires Design, Galerías Pacífico, Patio Bullrich, Patio Olmos, and a number of other leading Argentine shopping centers, as well as important tourist assests such as the Llao Llao Hotel, a Bariloche mountain resort privatized in 1997.[2]
Losses stemming from the economic crisis that began in 1998 led to the Soros Fund Management's divesting of most of its IRSA interests by late 1999, however. The strong recovery in the Argentine economy after 2002 then fostered growth into the mortgage lending sector, with the purchase of 28% of the formerly state owned Banco Hipotecario, and among its shopping centers, which as the source of half of IRSA's revenues, boosted the firm's income; in 2008, it developed Dot Buenos Aires, a 190,000m² (2 million ft²) shopping center and the largest building of its kind in Argentina.[3]
Elsztain is an annual conferee at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and is active in Jewish philanthropic causes as the prime Argentine supporter and fundraiser for the World Jewish Congress (WJC), for Taglit-birthright Israel, and as the President of Chabad Argentina. Close to leading American Jewish executive Edgar Bronfman, he was named Treasurer of the WJC in 2005, and its Chairman of the Governing Board (the group's second-highest post), in 2009.[4][5]
Elsztain currently serves on the Board of Directors of Endeavor, an international non-profit development organization that finds and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets.