MIGHTY YOUNG CEOs.

Technology is fueling a new generation of entrepreneurs.

AFTER RECEIVING AN ENGINEERING DEGREE FROM Buenos Aires University, Leonardo Gannio found his first job fixing heavy machinery for local companies. "My hands were always greasy and I wasn't making much money," says the young Argentine who ditched his industrial career and claimed a sales cubicle at the local offices of a multinational.

There he would remain today, if Silicon Valley software-maker Informix had not decided to expand into Latin America. It tapped him about three years ago to run its Southern Cone operations at the tender age of 32, largely due to his knowledge of new technology.

For decades in Latin America, being young and being in charge has been a rare combination. Not any more.

The all-powerful Internet, computers and communications are lifting mere students and lowly young managers into the top spots at start-ups and subsidiaries of important international companies. Less than 40 years old and fired up, these mighty young chief executive officers, or CEOs, are bent on changing the region's business landscape.

"We have the souls of pioneers," says CEO Gannio. "The older generation [of executives] is scared of us."

Not without reason. From Venezuelan Ric Fulop, 24, at technology start-up Into Networks in Boston, to Brent Willis, CocaCola's youngest subsidiary president ever at 39 in Caracas, these young turks are cosmopolitan, techno savvy graduates of the finest universities in the world. What is more, the best and brightest are immensely impatient.

Emillo Romano, 34, ditched his big executive job at Mexico's Televisa to found sports website SportsYA.com. He says that working for the world's largest Spanish-language media company meant he couldn't be his own boss and often he couldn't simply do what he wanted because of corporate politics. "Many times, the soccer teams and the television stations are owned by the same people," he says.

With about US$15 million from investors led by Chase Capital, his Miami Beach-based SportsYA! covers everything from Spanish bullfighting to U.S. football, and best of all, Romano doesn't have to get permission from anybody.

Golden combination. Business is quickly going digital across the region, opening a hole for vibrant risk-takers like Romano. There are no rules on how to run a business online and young people often have the least to lose by taking the plunge. The combination of youthful naiveul and the ability to get others to pay for those dreams seems to be the key to getting ahead.

Just ask 33-year-old Antonio Bonchristiano of e-commerce start-up Submarino.com in Sao Paulo. He embodies the perfect combination of visionary and fund-raiser. The Oxford-educated banker spotted an opportunity to turn around a failing supermarket chain in northeastern Brazil. Within two years he made the company profitable and sold it. He went back to work at local investment bank GP Investimentos, but Bonchristiano kept seeing start-ups roll through the office and finally decided to jump in.

Ultimately, it was the clean slate of the Internet that proved irresistible. He and some colleagues launched Submarino.com, which sells books, CDs and toys online. He has since raised almost $90 million in less than a year.

While the Internet itself is new, the opportunities that these young CEOs are exploiting often are not. Instead, they are transforming existing businesses.

When 30-year-old Gloria Constantini, for example, decided to form a web start-up company in Argentina, she sought a niche market that would "allow me to compete with other domestic companies and not internationally well-established firms."

An economist from a wealthy family of bankers, she had previously worked for her family's Banco Quilmes and at an international financial institution where she had heard tales of lucrative web ventures and opportunities to be had in Argentina's nascent e-commerce industry.

When she read a market research study that showed Argentines searching to buy a home worth between $150,000-$200,000 typically looked at 30 properties, she knew that she had found her niche--online real estate.

"Property has been bought and sold or rented in the same traditional way since my grandparents and great-grandparents days," she says. But by taking the business online, she could catapult to the forefront of the industry.

In late 1999, she launched hogardigital.com with just a few property listings in the Greater Buenos Aires area.

International jet-setters. Today, hogardigital.com has 400 real estate listings, which are provided for a flat fee. She also plans to add information on home loans, plumbing, painting, furniture and even suggestions on how to put up wallpaper.

Constantini, who says she will eventually invest $4 million in her web venture, plans to take her idea to other Latin American nations, beginning with neighboring Uruguay.

In this way she is like many of her contemporaries: the new breed of young CEOs is much more inclined to launch into international operations than their older predecessors. That has a lot to do with the Internet but it also reflects the fact that many of these executives already run in international circles.

Last summer in New York City, for example, Brazilian Stelleo Tolda bumped into Marcos Galperin and Hernan Kazah, two Argentine college buddies from Stanford University business school who had come to Lehman Brothers' New York office in search of venture capital.

As the brokerage house's new mergers and acquisitions executive, Tolda was asked to sit in on a meeting with his former classmates to discuss the creation of an online auction site in Latin America.

"It [the meeting] sparked something inside me," recalls the 32-year old Tolda. Two weeks later, he dumped his job security and comfortable salary to accept his ex-classmates' offer to return to Brazil to become the nationwide manager of mercadolivre.com.

"The decision was partially a function of what we in the MBA program called the Internet bug," explains the Sao Paulo-based executive. Since August, the Stanford grads have set up websites in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

Most of the young CEOs are U.S.-trained and well versed in the economic theories of free markets and competition. Those not from Harvard and Stanford and other top institutions in the North come from Latin American business schools heavily saturated with a U.S. curriculum.

One of the region's top business schools, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administration (IESA), in Caracas, has joint programs with U.S. schools and prides itself as being of the U.S. strain. "Our competition is with the U.S. institutions, but not everyone here can go to Harvard," says Paul Esqueda, the Venezuelan university's dean. "We use the American model while preparing our students to be the country's business leaders of tomorrow."

Bargain CEOs. One of Esqueda's former students and toy maker Mattel's man in Venezuela, Gabriel Zalzman, says that the key to being a good CEO has little to do with what school you go to but rather what kind of attitude you bring to the table. "The aim [for young CEOs] is to learn from the older ones," says Zalzman.

But relations between the older generation of executives and the mighty, young CEOs are not always so congenial. According to recruiting agencies, the young executives are taking charge not only because they are so spectacularly qualified, but also because they are cheaper. "The push for youth by multinational firms has an economic motivation," says Thomas Casey, head of Grupo Catho, a Brazilian executive search firm. "As executives get older, they make much more."

Many multinationals companies are banking on the productivity of younger CEOs to save their companies a bundle of cash as well as adapt their strategies to the new business environment. The shifting requirements seem particularly acute in consumer-product companies where new technology is producing great changes in marketing and advertising. Nestle gave Eugenio Minvielle, 35, the top spot at its Venezuelan subsidiary and Revlon put Francisco Camacho, 35, in charge of its operations in Brazil and Chile.

"I am an advertising executive at heart," says Juan Carlos Ortiz, the 32-year-old head of the Colombian division of advertising firm Leo Burnett. But he recognizes the growing importance of the Internet on his work. "The Internet is just one more outlet for advertising."

In many cases, the mighty, young CEOs are taking charge of small ventures and less important offices of the multinational companies than their older colleagues. However, the enterprises' size often belies the fact that the young executives increasingly wield power in the fastest growing business segments. Nowhere is this quite so quantifiably clear as the Internet start-ups with stratospheric market valuations that seem to reflect the takeover of a new generation. In 1996, Fernando Espuelas was chief executive officer of a lowly start-up called StarMedia. Today, the Internet company is worth more $3.7 billion.

Not surprisingly then, the offices at DeRemate.com, an online auction house, are nearly standing room only these days. Visitors huddle inside the main door ducking the steady stream of employees. CEO Alec Oxenford is talking about moving to bigger quarters for the second time in four months.

The bustle at DeRemate.com is testimony to the pace of the start-up's sizzling growth since its web debut in August 1999. Since then, the company has launched sites in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay.

Capital-lite. Much of the web company's initial success is due to the leadership of Oxenford. The 30-year-old Argentine of Scottish ancestry certainly believes in moving fast. Before making his last presentation for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), he launched DeRemate.com earlier that morning. "They (his former BCG employees) understood that in the Internet each week is like a year. I told them the opportunity was now," he says.

In any case, BCG managers shouldn't have been surprised. In the past year, the U.S. consulting firm had seen scores of its employees join Argentine Internet start-ups.

The concept of a Latin American online auction originated at a 1997 meeting in a 24-hour hamburger joint in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oxenford and four Latin classmates at Harvard Business School decided they wanted to go into business together. "It wasn't difficult to decide on the Internet," he explains. "We knew it was possible to enter without much capital."

Two years later, the partners secured $12 million from a group of investors led by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup.

None too soon because, as Oxenford says, speed is everything. "In auctions, two or three months is the difference between existing and not existing," he says.

Currently, DeRemate.com has some 16 competitors, including www.mercadolibre.com and subastacom. But for now, it remains the market leader, with some 80,000 customers registered throughout Latin America. "The market has room for only one or two of us," Oxenford predicts.

In the meantime, the Harvard grad is seeking more venture capital this year to expand operations to three more Latin American nations, which he won't identify for fear of tipping off the competition.

"This company could soon be worth several billion dollars," he says.

RIC FULOP

Into Networks

Age: 24

Boston

High-tech Joven: Energized Venezuelan is on his third start-up.

VICTOR LEVY

Vortal 1

Age: 27

Miami

Garoto on the Go: Successfully spearheaded Gazeta Mercantil's efforts in the United States.

KYLE MCNAMARA

Espanol.com

Age: 28

Boston

The Professor: Former Spanish teacher traded classroom for e-commerce.

WENCESLAO CASARES

Patagon.com

Age: 26

Miami

Patagonian Prodigy: Dynamic duo with Constancio Larguia runs financial website.

GONZALO ARZUAGA

GarageLatino.com

Age: 28

Miami

Grease Monkey: Argentine e-mechanic builds websites from his Miami garage

SEBASTIAN POPIK

Salutia.com

Age: 28

Miami

Cosmopolitan Curandero: Harvard grad & pal Gerardo Waisburg hawk health online.

MIGUEL DEICAZA

Helix Code

Age: 26

Boston

Microsoft Nemesis: Mexican math whiz aims to crash Office's desktop dominance.

MIGUEL MARIACA

24/7 Media

Age: 28

Sao Paulo

Banner Man: U.S.-trained MBA directs Brazil office of Internet ad business.

ANDRE ROBIN-VANYI

Visualcom

Age: 28

Miami

Le Guru: French diplomat's son sells picks and shovels to Internet pioneers.

GLORIA CONSTANTINI

Hogardigital.com

Age: 30

Buenos Aires

The Condo Countess: Argentine beer and banking heir sells property online.

JUAN CARLOS ORTIZ

Leo Burnett

Age: 31

Bogota

Advertising Ace: "The Internet is just one more outlet for advertising."

MARCO ANTONIO SLIM

Grupo Carso

Age: 31

Mexico City

Slim Scion: Heir to the Telmex phone and financial fortune expands empire.

ALEC OXENFORD

Deremate.com

Age: 30

Buenos Aires

Super-sized CEO: Porteno & pals hatched auction site at Harvard burger joint.

SERGI RIAU

Adecco

Age: 31

Sao Paulo

Catalonian Catalyst: Spanish firm's exec manages computer network biz in Brazil.

STELLEO TOLDA

Mercadolivre.com

Age: 32

Sao Paulo

Market Master: Stanford MBA and engineer traded Lehman Bros. for web auctions.

EMILIO AZCARRAGA

Grupo Televisa

Age: 31

Mexico City

El Tigrito: Maverick's son puts Mexican media monopoly on Slim Fast plan.

ERIC SHANNON

Latpro.com

Age: 31

Plantation, FL

Web Headhunter: Florida's latest e-dition, U.S. Pro lists Lat jobs online.

GREG BARTON

Business News America

Age: 33

Santiago

Paperless Publisher: Brit delivers news on Latin American business via the Internet.

ANTONIO BONCHRISTIANO

Submarino.com

Age: 33

Sao Paulo

The Virtual Earl: Oxford-educated Brazilian banker makes e-commerce his domain.

MARCIO SCHETTINI

Cartao Unibanco

Age: 33

Sao Paulo

Card Dealer: Paulista banker credits e-commerce with 80% increase in card issuance in 1999.

LORENZO MENDOZA

Empresas Polar

Age: 34

Caracas

Suds Stud: Beer and banking heir heads family business, the largest in Venezuela.

CARLOS CISNEROS

Cisneros TV Group

Age: 33

Miami

Playboy TV Pinup: Nephew of Venezuelan media mogul runs pay TV group.

MARIA CINTRON

Young Entrepreneurs' Org.

Age: 34

Mexico City

Cross-border Capitalist: U.S.-educated daughter of Mexican businessman heads young CEO society.

EMILIO ROMANO

SportsYA!

Age: 34

Miami Beach

Football Fanatic: Mexican lawyer ditched career with Televisa to run online sports channel.

CARLOS FERNANDEZ

Grupo Modelo

Age: 33

Mexico City

The Corona Kid: Family successor in 75-year-old beer business goes global.

FERNANDO ESPUELAS

StarMedia

Age: 34

New York

Uruguayan Usurper: Ex-AT&T exec is the Napoleon of the Latin American web.

GABRIEL ZALZMAN

Mattel

Age: 34

Caracas

Play-Maker: Former Nabisco biscuit star oversees Mattel's operations in Venezuela.

FRANCISCO CAMACHO

Revlon

Age: 35

Miami

Vanity Valedictorian: Straight 'A' student from Mexico runs Chile and Brazil operations for beauty biz.

OSCAR COEN

Yupi.com

Age: 35

Miami

Web Yupi: Dominican banker merengues with investors to promote his Internet portal.

LEONARDO GANNIO

Informix

Age: 35

Buenos Aires

Silicon Pampero: Argentine engineer corrals countries for U.S. software company.

EUGENIO MINVIELLE

Nestle

Age: 35

Caracas

Scratch Salesman: Mexican golfer got Harvard MBA and shot to top spot.

JUAN MAGGIO

Southern Winds

Age: 36

Buenos Aires

High-flying Gaucho: Founder of budget airline in Argentina has sights set on Mercosur.

ANDRES OBREGON

Grupo Bavaria

Age: 37

Bogota

Beer Baron: Runs the family beer and juice conglomerate dating back to 1876.

HORACIO WERNER

Motorola

Age: 37

Buenos Aires

Doktor Handy: Argentine- German with PhD from Deutschland is Motorola's Southern Cone handyman.

GUILLERMO LEON

La Aurora

Age: 39

Cigar Aficionado: Third generation CEO increases output for family cigar business.

BRENT WILLIS

Coca-Cola

Age: 39

Caracas

Coke's Cadet: West Point grad is the soft drink's youngest president ever.