Core Field: Political Leadership

The Author

Hernando de Soto has published two books, The Mystery of Capital and The Other Path both of which have been international bestsellers and have been translated into 20 languages. The Mystery of Capital was chosen as one of the ten best business and finance books for 2000 in the US and the UK

No one has ever seen so clearly why the developing world remains poor—or how to solve the problem. In his groundbreaking bestseller, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Hernando de Soto asks—and answers—one of the most pressing questions of our time: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? His simple yet profound approach to relieving poverty in the developing world has earned him international awards and advisory roles with heads of state and corporate leaders alike. Hernando de Soto is President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) headquartered in Lima, Peru. ILD designs and implements capital formation programs to empower the poor around the world.

The Award Winner

Mr. de Soto has received a number of prestigious international awards.

• Finalist to receive the Nobel Prize for Finance in 2002
• Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, The Cato Institute, (USA)
• The Freedom Prize (Switzerland)
• The Fisher Prize (United Kingdom)
• The Goldwater Award (USA)
• The Adam Smith Award, Association of Private Enterprise Education (USA)
• CARE Humanitarian Award (Canada)
• 2003 Downey Fellow at Yale University
• Democracy Hall of Fame International inductee, National Graduate University.
• The Templeton Freedom Prize 2004 (USA)
• Time magazine has named de Soto one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special issue on “Leaders for the New Millennium” and included him on its Time 100 list of the most powerful and influential people in the world for 2004
• The German magazine Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit named Mr. de Soto one of the most important development thought leaders of the last millennium.

In Business

President, Institute for Liberty & Democracy

For his work, Mr. de Soto was named as a. Considered the father of the concept of under-exploited assets, or “dead capital,”.

An extremely successful businessman, de Soto retired from business at the age of 38 and turned his energies to the problems of poverty in his native Peru. De Soto founded the ILD in 1983 and as President Alberto Fujimori’s Personal Representative and Principal Advisor for a time, helped to modernize Peru’s economic system. He duplicated this effort for El Salvador, at the request of its president, and has assisted Russia, Haiti, Algeria, and Ghana, and many other countries.

Positions

Member, World Commission on the Global Dimension of Globalization,
Member, UNDP Taskforce to Examine Private Resources for Development
Member, Expert Group on Development Issues, EGDI, established by the Swedish Government.
Former economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
Former Governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank.
Former President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization (CIPEC),
Former Managing Director of Universal Engineering Corporation,
Former Principal, the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group

Credentials

Former Personal Representative and Principal Advisor, President of Peru
Former governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank
Member, World Commission on the Global Dimension of Globalization
UNDP Taskforce to Examine Private Resources for Development