Beckham Pal Claure Goes From Street Vendor to Sprint CEO Job

Sprint Corp.’s new 43-year-old chief executive officer, Marcelo Claure, grew an upstart mobile-phone vendor into a $7 billion business he tapped to fund his love of soccer and enter Miami’s celebrity-filled social scene.

The 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter) Claure, who holds both U.S. and Bolivian citizenship, founded Brightstar Corp. in 1997, three years after taking a job as a general manager of Bolivia’s soccer federation. His move last year to sell a 57 percent stake to SoftBank Corp. for $1.26 billion elevated him to the cusp of $1 billion in net worth, a topic that made him laugh in a May interview with Bloomberg News.