Rubens Menin of Brazil named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2018

KUCHING: Rubens Menin, Chairman of Brazil-based MRV Engenharia e Participações SA, was named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2018 at an awards ceremony held in Monaco’s Salle des Etoiles.

Rubens was picked from among 761 program participants that included the 56 country winners from 46 countries and regions vying for the title here in Monaco. Rubens becomes the first ever EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year winner from South America.

Rubens, 62, founded MRV, a homebuilder and real estate company, in 1979 and has grown it into Latin America’s largest real estate developer by units sold and Brazil’s leading low-income housing builder.

In 2017, MRV recorded net operating revenue amounting to US$1.44 billion with a net income of US$197 million. These figures represent substantial growth since it was listed on B3 in 2007, when net revenue amounted to US$105 million and net income totaled US$13 million. MRV employs more than 24,000 people, operates in 150 cities and has built some 300,000 properties. In these cities, one in 200 people lives in a property built by MRV.

Jim Nixon, chairman and chief executive officer of Nixon Energy Investments and Chair of the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year judging panel, said,” The judging panel is honored to award Rubens this year’s title and to recognize the first EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year from South America.

“The judging panel was struck by his innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and his purpose of seeking a fairer and more egalitarian society.”

Rubens recognised that for many Brazilians, home ownership was an unobtainable dream, which motivated him to start his own company. In 1979 at just 21 years old, he founded MRV Engenharia e Participações SA with two partners.

During the “favelisation” of cities in Brazil in the 1970s, Rubens saw an opportunity to make real estate more affordable to the masses by changing homebuilding from a quasi-artisanal activity to a true industry.

Under Rubens’ leadership, the building company has delivered more than 320,000 houses and apartments in Brazil through 2017, enabling over one million people to realize their home ownership dream.

Currently, MRV manages a total of 214 construction sites, with an average of 398 housing units per site. Since 2008 MRV, with several other companies, has been part of the Brazilian Federal Government’s social housing program “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” (My House, My Life) and delivered three million houses to Brazilians.

Over the decades, Rubens has also diversified his activities. In 1994, he founded Banco Inter, which in March 2018 filed a request with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission to go public.

In2008,hecreatedLOG,acompany specializing in the development and lease of logistics property, malls, office parks and commercial lots. And in 2012, he founded American Housing Solutions (AHS), a lowincome housing company in the US that provides access to quality housing for households currently spending more than half of their income on rent.

In the same year, Rubens also founded URBAMAIS, a plot developer that works with families to build high-quality, sustainable residential subdivisions.