A year ago, Eike Batista was Brazil’s richest man, and his
goal of climbing to No. 1 in the world seemed within reach, according to Bloomberg. After founding five
publicly traded natural-resource companies in six years, he’d just sold a stake
in his EBX Group conglomerate that valued his holdings at $34.5 billion. His
companies had yet to turn a profit, so the deal, struck with an Abu Dhabi
sovereign wealth fund, was mainly a testament to Batista’s vision: an
integrated empire of companies, shipping oil and iron ore to China from a port
he was building near Rio de Janeiro. “I think Eike is a special kind of entrepreneur,”
said Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff during a visit to the port project in
April. “He’s a person who comes up with extremely ambitious dreams and then
seeks to fulfill them.” Today, Batista’s
empire is under siege….
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