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Juan Sartori (born 6 February 1981) is a Uruguayan businessman and entrepreneur. He is the president and founder of Union Group (http://www.uniongrp.com/), a privately owned conglomerate which holds significant interests in businesses spanning the agricultural, energy, forestry, infrastructure, minerals, oil and gas and real estate sectors in Latin America. Sartori is also the largest shareholder in the International Cannabis Corporation, the first recreational cannabis producer to list on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

He has appeared as a speaker and panellist at the Milken Institute Global Conference and appears regularly for business broadcast meda including Bloomberg, BNN and CNBC commenting on Latin American current affairs, markets and investments.

Early life
Juan Sartori was born in Montevideo (Uruguay). He lived in Paris and Switzerland, where he attended HEC (Hautes Etudes Commerciales) in Lausanne, graduating in 2002 with a degree in Business and Economics. He also attended Harvard University where he studied economics and international finance.

Early career
After graduating university in 2002, Sartori began his career as an investor and entrepreneur founding Union Capital Group, a Geneva based multi-strategy asset manager, at the age of 22. He grew the business to $1 billion assets under management before selling it to the management team in 2008.

Union Group
Sartori started Union Group in Uruguay in 2006 with a blueberry farming business, subsequently branching out into rice, soya bean and wheat production, and sheep and cattle raising. In 2008, he founded Union Agriculture Group (UAG) to manage his agricultural interests and, in 2013, floated UAG on the Montevideo Stock Exchange. UAG was the largest company to list on the exchange and, as of 11 June 2014, accounted for approximately 70 per cent of its market capitalisation. UAG is the largest agriculture business in Uruguay with 180,000 hectares of land and 85,000 heads of cattle.

Union Group has since expanded into a range of other sectors. In 2010, Sartori began investing in energy generation projects in Latin America. In 2013 Union Group acquired Peruvian hydropower company Generacion Andina from German utility company EnBW (Energie Baden-Wurttemberg),. In 2015, Union Group secured a $59m financing package from a consortium of banks for two hydropower projects, bringing the overall investment into energy assets in the region to around 1GW. The plants are forecast to supply 15 per cent of Peru’s energy needs.

In April 2013, Union Group acquired a controlling stake in offshore oil exploration Block Z-34 in the north-west of Peru from Gold Oil. An independent report on the block estimates mean prospective resources of 2.02 billion barrels of oil.

Another Union Group subsidiary, Union Oil and Gas Group (UOGG), acquired 80 per cent of Peruvian onshore oil and gas Block 183 in the Marañon Basin, as well as a 50 per cent stake in Block 105 located in the Titicaca Basin. UOGG’s portfolio also includes oil exploration blocks in Paraguay and Bolivia. In 2015, Union Group signed a deal with China Communication Construction Company (CCCC), one of the biggest engineering and construction companies in the world, to finance and develop infrastructure projects across Latin America. Sartori has also invested in mining operations, particularly in Paraguay and Peru, with a diversified portfolio of assets including iron ore, nickel, titanium, gold and diamond projects.

Union Group is a developer and operator of residential and commercial real estate assets in Uruguay and Peru.

Personal life
In 2015, El País reported Sartori married Ekaterina Rybolovleva.