Galperin is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Mercado Libre, the largest online marketplace in Latin America. The Buenos Aires-based company also owns e-payment processor Mercado Pago, logistics service Mercado Envios and the Mercado Classifieds service. It had revenue of $14.5 billion in 2023.
The majority of Galperin's fortune is derived from an 8% stake in Mercado Libre, according to the company's 2023 proxy filing. The Buenos Aires-based business is traded on the NASDAQ exchange and is the largest online marketplace in Latin America, according to the same proxy filing.
He controls the share through the Galperin Trust, an irrevocable trust established under New Zealand law as part of a 2012 estate planning transaction for the benefit of his family and certain charitable organizations, according to exchange filings. The shares are held by Meliga No. 1, a New Zealand limited partnership, and controlled through Zug, Switzerland-based Intertrust Suisse Trustee, Amsterdam-based Volorama Stichting and a "protective committee" that governs the voting and disposition of the shares.
Galperin is credited with the shares in Bloomberg's analysis as founder of Mercado Libre and to reflect the fact he gifted the shares for estate planning purposes, according to the filings.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of share sales, dividends, market performance, taxes and charitable contributions.
Valeria Bazzi, a spokesperson for Mercado Libre, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Marcos Galperin was born in Buenos Aires in 1972. After finishing school he was selected by Argentina's junior national team to play rugby, according to an October 2014 profile by BBC News. Instead he moved to the United States to study finance at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1994. He moved back to Argentina and worked for energy company YPF for three years, according to Mercado Libre's 2016 proxy.
Galperin joined Stanford University's Graduate school of business in 1997 and received his MBA two years later. After studying EBay's business model he got the idea for a Latin American version and met his first investor after volunteering to drive hedge fund partner John Muse, a guest speaker at the university, back to his private plane, according to the BBC. By the end of the journey Muse had agreed to invest in Mercado Libre, Galperin told Bloomberg in a 2007 interview. The Argentine started the company with a group of classmates from a garage in Buenos Aires.
EBay bought a 19.5% stake in Mercado Libre in 2001, which floated shares on the Nasdaq in August 2007. It's the largest online marketplace in Latin America, according to its 2019 annual report.