Mexico's Sheinbaum Finds Unlikely Ally in Young Heir to Corn-Flour Fortune
Days after winning Mexico's presidential election last year, Claudia Sheinbaum tried to calm traders who were dumping their pesos. Investors feared what her left-leaning party would do with its almost perfect victory—her coalition had also won most state governorships and congressional seats. She sat down with executives from BlackRock Inc., the world's largest money manager, and Altagracia Gómez Sierra, the then 32-year-old heir to a corn-flour fortune.
Gómez Sierra has become Sheinbaum's guide to the world of commerce, an unlikely ally for a party that rails against what it calls the 'mafia of power.' She chairs Promotora Empresarial de Occidente SA (Business Promoter of the West), a family enterprise with interests in agrochemicals, consumer goods, transportation and real estate. Its shares of publicly traded Grupo Minsa SAB de CV, a seller of corn flour for tortillas, are alone worth more than $200 million. Uncommonly young and outspoken for Mexico's business world, known for its aging crop of billionaires, Gómez Sierra plays up her difference with long eyelashes, floor-length dresses and glimmering headbands that, if you squint, look like tiaras.
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