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For Brazilian billionaire, money from ore, might from the cosmos

By Alexei Barrionuevo
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, SALVADOR, BRAZIL
Sunday, Aug 03, 2008, Page 12

“I am connected to the divine, to these forces here,” Joao Carlos Cavalcanti, the Brazilian mining magnate, said as he swept an arm out across the lily pad-covered lake behind his US$15 million mansion.

A gentle breeze rustled through his thick white beard. Cavalcanti, 59, stood on the pier and closed his eyes for a moment. A uniformed servant, one of a staff of 15, hovered nearby with hors d’oeuvres and nonalcoholic drinks. She knew better than to disturb a man who meditates for three hours a day and constantly refers to himself as a “mystical” person who draws strength from “the cosmos” — when he is not collecting expensive cars, fine paintings and other playthings.

Minutes later, as Cavalcanti made his way back up the hill, through his Thai and Indonesian-inspired gardens with Buddhist statues, his cell phone rang. Another banker was calling, this one from Canada, eager to do business with one of Brazil’s newest billionaires. Cavalcanti explained that he had big plans of his own, to form a “world mining bank” with Merrill Lynch and raise capital for exploration projects around the world.

This is the life of the nouveau billionaire in Brazil — the life that Cavalcanti said he dreamed of from the age of 9 and from the time he immersed himself in biographies of Henry Ford, John Jacob Astor and John Rockefeller.

A geologist by training, Cavalcanti — who goes by J.C. — applied his knowledge and considerable gumption to discovering huge reserves of iron ore and other minerals. Today he pegs his net worth at US$1.2 billion, placing him among the 20 richest men in Brazil. Before this year is out, he vows to have US$1 billion in liquid investments, to go with his 39 cars, 10 homes and two airplanes.

Cavalcanti, the son of a railroad-track laborer, seemed highly unlikely to become a billionaire. He spent his early years in a rustic two-bedroom house in Cacule, a small farming town in Bahia state. At 24, he concluded that Bahia was too small for him, so he left for a consulting job in Sao Paulo with a German firm. He spent Sundays driving the wealthy neighborhoods, photographing mansions in Morumbi and in Jardim Europa and admiring the BMWs and Porsches in the showrooms.

“I always had a vision of what I wanted to have,” he said.

Later, he began prospecting on his own for minerals. By 2003, with cash to support his search drying up, he sold a beach house and an apartment to raise investment funds. The gamble paid off in 2004, when he discovered a huge iron ore reserve back home in Bahia. Other geologists had long given up on the area; the giant mining company Vale, which owned a magnesium reserve close by, had missed the iron deposit, Cavalcanti said.

By his telling, he discovered the reserve while driving at night mostly alone in a four-wheel-drive truck, relying on old regional maps dating from 1937.

Mining industry publications report that Cavalcanti later sold the reserve, which contains at least 1.8 billion tons of ore, to an Indian miner, Pramod Agarwal, for some US$360 million.

The son of Italian immigrants, Cavalcanti said he was building his 11th home in the family’s native Tuscany.

For all his lavish possessions, Cavalcanti described himself as a disciplined soul who long ago forsook the playboy life for a deeply spiritual one. He does not drink or smoke. He described soccer, the passion of most Brazilians, as “a waste of time.” He said he detested Carnival, the annual street bacchanal for which Salvador is widely known.

He met his wife, Renilce, at a family wedding when he was 12 years old. He said they shared a passion for studying spiritual gurus that spanned the gamut. The library of his Salvador home is filled with books from authors like Joel Goldsmith, the American Christian Scientist.

He and his wife say all living things should be protected.

Cavalcanti said he spurned a deal with a mining entrepreneur in 2004 after the man crushed a large ant with his fist at a Salvador restaurant.

“I told him I would no longer do business with him,” Cavalcanti said. “He thought I was crazy.”
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