Jorge Paulo Lemann

Jorge Paulo Lemann (born August 26, 1939) is a Brazilian billionaire investment banker, businessman, and former tennis player with dual Brazilian and Swiss citizenship.

Lemann co-founded investment firm 3G Capital, which owns brands such as Burger King, Tim Hortons, Anheuser-Busch and Heinz.

Early life In 1939, Lemann was born in Rio de Janeiro to Paul Lemann, His father died in a bus accident in 1953, when Lemann was 14. As a child, Lemann expressed aspirations of becoming an inventor, and admired Thomas Edison. He built different machines but they usually did not work out. Lemann attended the American School of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1960, he received a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University. Lemann did not enjoy his time at Harvard, stating that "My first year at Harvard was horrible. I was only 17 and I missed the beach and the sun a lot. Boston was too cold for me. It was my first time in the USA and I was not used to study or to write; we had to write a lot in Harvard. My grades were the worst possible." After setting off fireworks on the last day of his freshman year, he was reprimanded and considered dropping out, but ultimately decided to stay on.

Tennis career During his youth, Lemann played tennis. He won the Brazilian national tennis championship five times. He participated in the Davis Cup twice, once as part of the Swiss Davis Cup team and once on behalf of the Brazilian team, and also played at Wimbledon in 1962.

Career From 1961 to 1962, he worked as a trainee at Credit Suisse in Geneva. Lemann and his partners now help to control AB Inbev as members of its board of directors.

Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Banco Garantia was sold to Credit Suisse First Boston in July 1998 for $675m. Lemann is a director of Endeavor's Brazil office. Endeavor is an international non-profit development organization that finds and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Later he and his partners, who founded private equity company GP Investimentos,

AmBev merged with Interbrew of Belgium in August 2004. The stock of the combined firm, InBev, rose 40 percent during 2005. InBev then announced it would buy the American brewer Anheuser-Busch in 2008 for $46 billion in a highly controversial deal, making it the world's largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch Inbev (abbreviated as AB Inbev) securing Lemann's status as one of the new "Kings" of beer.

Lemann is a board member of Lojas Americanas S.A. and was a former board member of Gillette (where he first worked with Warren Buffett); chairman of the Latin American Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange; founder and board member of Fundação Estudar, pt which provides scholarships for Brazilian students; and a member of the international advisory board of DaimlerChrysler.

Lemann is a co-founder of Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital, which owns brands such as Burger King, Anheuser-Busch and Heinz. In September 2010, 3G launched a $4 billion bid, at a 45% premium over market, for all the stock of Burger King. "3G was advised in the BK offer by Lazard, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays Capital and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. 3G already has some experience in burgers and fries, having previously invested in Wendy's." Together with Berkshire Hathaway, 3G Capital acquired the H. J. Heinz Company for $28 billion in 2013. Its new CEO Bernardo Hees is a former manager of Burger King. The same group announced the merger of Kraft Foods with Heinz in March 2015. He was on the board of Kraft Heinz until 2021, when he announced he was leaving to reduce his travel commitments.

In March 2023, following an increase in Ambev's market cap, he once again became the richest person in Brazil.

In 2002, Lemann founded the Lemann Foundation, which in 2025 funded the creation of the Lemann Center at the University of Zurich.

In June 2026, the Instituto Coordenadas de Gobernanza y Economía Aplicada, a Madrid-based think tank, named Lemann one of the 25 most influential business leaders in Latin America. The ranking evaluated criteria including value creation, industry leadership, regional influence, international reach, and economic impact.

Personal life Lemann married twice and has six children, three with his first wife and three with his second wife Susanna. He usually shares his time between São Paulo, Rapperswil-Jona on Lake Zurich,

In 1994, he suffered a heart attack at age 54.

Lemann rarely gives interviews or appears publicly, and is little known in the United States. However, according to Bloomberg, Lemann has a reputation as a "business-class hero" in Brazil, who described him as "the wiry, white-haired conglomerateur who’s part Buffett, part Sam Walton, part Roger Federer."