Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros is setting up joint ventures with Chinese banks to carry out investment in Latin American commodities industries.

The chairman of Cisneros Group of Companies, who is relinquishing operations of the firm to his youngest daughter Adriana, said he aims to push through projects delayed by state inefficiencies through partnerships in energy, agriculture and metals. Deals may take place in countries including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Panama, Cisneros said.
“You’ll probably see in the next year or two a lot of Cisneros China or China Cisneros in Latin America and it’s going to be whatever comes, whether it’s oil, gold or big cattle operations,” Cisneros, 66, said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “They understand they don’t have the knowledge to run these businesses. They need results now and we can provide results.”
Cisneros, who first traveled to China about 30 years ago with billionaire philanthropist David Rockefeller, is expanding into deals with the Chinese after shedding beverage and consumer-goods companies and America Online Latin America since the early 1990s to focus on his Venevision television network. Banks in China, the third-largest source of foreign direct investment in Latin America, lent Brazil’s state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4) $10 billion in 2009 in exchange for oil supplies, among credit provided to secure resources from the region.
China Development Bank
Since 2007, government-owned China Development Bank has lent more than $68 billion to Venezuela, Turkmenistan, Ecuador, Brazil and Russia in exchange for crude and gas shipments. Liu Kegu, a bank adviser, said in a Jan. 15 interview that the lender would extend credit to Chile, Peru and some African nations.
China Investment Corp., the country’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund, is targeting mining, real estate and infrastructure investments in the Americas, Felix Chee, the fund’s representative in Canada, said at a CFA Society Conference in Toronto today. The fund has three “active deals” under consideration, he said.
Export-Import Bank of China Ltd., the nation’s policy lender specializing in cross-border trade and investment, and Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. agreed last year to tie up with Inter-American Development Bank to expand their trade finance activities in Latin America.