Lithium King's $3.5 Billion Fortune Now Facing Government Threat
Augusto Pinochet’s former son-in-law got rich with SQM. New scrutiny of the industry could threaten his recent windfall.
Few people are better positioned for the electric-vehicle revolution than the billionaire Julio Ponce Lerou.
He retired years ago, but the former son-in-law of late dictator Augusto Pinochet is still known in Chile as the lithium king. And Ponce has never been richer: The shareholder group he leads has seen its approximately 25% stake in SQM, the world’s No. 2 lithium miner, quintuple over the past seven years amid record profit, increasing the value of the portion he owns to $3.5 billion.