Soros follows Gates with Spanish investments

In 2013, Bill Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest men, bought a 6% stake in Spanish construction company FCC for $148.4 million. This seems a somewhat unusual move for the man who made his fortune from state of the art technology, if only because FCC is a construction firm, which seems a little outside Gates’ typical sphere of interest.

However, FCC Construcción is a well-established Spanish company with over 110 years of experience and it’s part of the FCC Group, one of Europe’s leading construction, environmental and water groups. The group has a total revenue in excess of €11 billion, to which FCC in Spain contributes 55%.

The story might not have caught our attention were it not for the fact that only three months after Bill Gates announced his investment, yet another of the ‘world’s wealthiest’ also invested in FCC. This time it was George Soros, who, according to Venture Capital Post bought a 3.1% stake in FCC from philanthropist Esther Koplowitz who is FCC’s largest shareholder and one of the richest women in Spain. She reportedly sold 3.8% of her holdings, valued at €72 million, but exactly who bought the remaining part of that parcel remains unknown.

It is good news for Spain’s economy to see overseas investors of this stature putting money into the country and can only help to raise the economic profile as well as assist in attracting other large investors.

Soros, the 84-year old with a personal wealth of 24 billion dollars (according to Forbes), survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest and fled communist Hungary to study at the London School of Economics, where he financed his studies by working as a railway porter.

Although George Soros won’t be buying more shares in FCC at present, he has said he won’t be selling any of his shares in the upcoming sale either. It will be interesting to see how many more international billionaires turn up in 2015 to invest in Spain; the presence of two prominent ones is an encouraging sign for the future.