Fortune 500
Porfirio:
The Atallahs are Dominican-Arabs, just like the Haches, the Najris, the Antuns and many other upper class Dominican foreign ethnic groups. Leonel is a "chopo" Dominican with excellent education and background, who has cracked society thru his political achievements. He does not and will never meet the criteria for the upper class, but is a tributary of this class, because he serves their purpose.
As to escalation to the fortune 500, you contradict yourself. You say that as Dominican Republic industrializes a growing upper class will result, therefore others will be able to mix in with the high society.
But then you say that Dominicans will never be able to crack Fortune 500. What is it?
Let me tell you that there a few families in DR who are extremely rich, both in property ownership and liquidity, and are not far off any of the top U.S. families.
Dominican brewery families are only growing bigger and bigger and have major international influence in their fields. For instance, Cerveza Presidente, the Brugals, the Barcelos are way up there with international products with increasing sales worldwide. As Dominicans continue their super birth rate in foreign countries(Dominicans have been found in Iceland and there is even a growing Alaskan community) Dominicans who sell abroad will become as rich as anybody.
Our hotel entrepeneurs are now expanding abroad and becoming chain owners. There is even a chance that a Dominican baseball player could crack Fortune 500 with a long term contract.
For instance, Forbes top 400 Americans star at 550 million dollars. We have Dominicans who are pretty close to that now. Some of them own real estate that can come close to $100 million now alone. Frank Pimentel hotelier already owns a helicopter and air plane and owns several Bavaro Hotels. I have a friend who just sold Hotel Coral Costa Caribe to the BHD Group, owns two Porches Turbos, and many luxury cars, owns another hotel and has a construction company, sold his bank(Banco de Desarollo Agropecuario) and is only 39 years old.
Even in our entertaining field we have potential Fortunites, like Corporan De Los Santos, who just sold his TV-Radio network for quite a bit, has an international TV show that runs almost all day on saturdays, has government contracts, and quantious real estate holdings here and abroad. Juan Luis Guerra grows richer and richer from copyrights to his music and is now under contract with the Estefans, producing music for their best artists.
By the time Sammy Sosa retires and with the possibility of beating Hank Aarons's 755hr record, his intake including commercials and endorsements will place him right there with the biggies. Remember, this guy is taking close to $25 million a year and has that money producing high interests, with relatively low expenses. House in Santo Domingo is worth US$3,200,000. In DR he has two Ferraris, Mercedes S500's for his bodyguards and several other exotic cars, jeepetas, Hummers and a fleet of additional vehicles. He owns a penthouse at Chicago's One Magnificent Mile with Oprah as his neighbor and has property in Miami, Fla. When he won the MVP he got a purple collectors Plymouth Prowler. He is the king of endorsements in DR and pretty much in Chicago too.
The Asencio family owns E. Leon Jimenez, the top tobacco company in DR, they own a bank(Banco Profesional)and offered to buy Bancredito. They will eventually buy up one of our big banks when the right opportunity arrives. This is the biggest taxpayer in the DR, so much so, that if this company falls apart the Dominican economy may go into a budgetary crash.
TW