Brazil’s Builder for Masses Betting on Maids as He Lifts Profit

At Brazilian real-estate company MRV Engenharia & Participacoes SA, electric fans whir in some rooms of its gray, low-slung building, saving the cost of air conditioning. That’s typical of Rubens Menin Teixeira de Souza’s approach to the business he founded in 1979 -- and which has since vaulted him into the ranks of the world’s billionaires, with an estimated net worth of at least $1.6 billion, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September cover package: “Hidden Billionaires.”

While other homebuilders targeted wealthy Brazilians, Menin began by selling to the lowest earners -- the nation’s brick-layers and housekeepers, as he describes them. He provided loans to his own clients and trimmed costs by designing just a few standard models.