Sarmiento is the chairman and founder of Grupo Aval, Colombia's largest banking group. The Bogota-based company had nearly $61 billion in assets by the end of 2022. He also owns two insurance providers operating under the Alfa brand, as well as newspaper El Tiempo and real estate developer Construcciones Planificadas.
The majority of Sarmiento's fortune is derived from his stake in Grupo Aval, Colombia's largest banking group, according to the company website. The billionaire controls 97.8% of the company's voting shares and 45.4% of its preferred shares, according to the company's 2022 annual report. He also owns smaller outside stakes in the five banks controlled by Aval: Banco AV Villas, Banco de Occidente, Banco de Bogota, Banco Popular and Corficolombiana.
His two insurance companies, which operate under the Alfa moniker, are valued using the average price-to-book and price-to-earnings multiples of three Latin American peer companies: Brazil's Porto Seguro, Chile's Prevision Vida and Peru's Rimac.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, reinvestments, stakes in closely held companies, and market performance.
The second-youngest of nine children, Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo studied engineering at Bogota's National University. He started his own construction firm in 1956 and amassed a small fortune building roads and housing projects. He expanded into finance in 1971 when he acquired the ailing lender Banco de Occidente and founded insurance company Seguros Alfa.
He continued to build his financial empire over the decades that followed, both by starting his own firms (pension fund Porvenir, lender Corporacion de Ahorro y Vivienda Las Villas) and by acquiring others (Banco de Bogota, Banco Popular). In 1998, he united most of his financial interests under a new holding company, Grupo Aval, which held an IPO the following year.
Through Corficolombiana, Aval's investment bank, Sarmiento owns an array of interests in infrastructure, agribusiness, energy and tourism. He also maintains a real estate business, Construcciones Planificadas. The company oversaw the 2010 construction of Colombia's biggest mall, Bogota's Centro Mayor, and is building a 6.5 million square-foot office complex near the city's airport -- the Ciudad Empresarial Sarmiento Angulo.
Sarmiento remains Aval's chairman after naming his only son, Luis Carlos Sarmiento Gutierrez, CEO in 2000.