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A brief biography of Hernando De Soto
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 Hernando De Soto is currently President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) headquartered in Lima, Peru. He was recently chosen as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century by “Time” magazine in its special May 1999 issue on “Leaders for the New Millennium”.
Mr. De Soto was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1941 and did his post-graduate work at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva. He has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as president of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC), as managing director of the Universal Engineering Corporation, as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.
As his principal activity, Mr. De Soto, together with the ILD, is designing and implementing capital formation programs for the poor in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
Mr. De Soto was President Alberto Fujimori’s Personal Representative and Principal Advisor until he resigned at the time of the President’s coup d’état. He and the ILD have been responsible for some 400 laws and regulations that have modernized Peru’s economic system, opening it up to greater participation by the majority.
Mr. De Soto published “The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else”, which is Peru’s best selling book ever and is among the 10 best business and finance books for 2000 in the US and the UK. It has been published in English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Chinese and Portuguese and will soon be available in Russian, Polish, Korean, German, Greek, and French. |
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