Colombian builder, 27, hopes to build Trump hotel one day

Tunja, Colombia

OF ALL the would-be business partners of Donald Trump who have been hoping to capitalise on his win, there is surely no one who stands to gain quite as much - relatively speaking - as young Colombian builder Nicolas Jimenez.

Mr Jimenez, you see, doesn't have much to begin with.

His company, Fortun, is the local partner of US investors who have drawn up a US$350 million plan to build the Trump International Hotel and Tower Bogota, featuring a pair of 72-storey skyscrapers that would be among the tallest in Latin America. New York-based Yun Capital, a longtime Trump backer, is putting up the money; Mr Jimenez has been looking for a site, and said he hopes to complete a deal this month.

Which would be great for Mr Jimenez, 27, because he has never built a skyscraper, let alone a hotel or office building, or anything over three stories, for that matter. His company does not have a website. He still lives with his parents."Big things sometimes start small," said Mr Jimenez, which sounded like something his idol would say.

What Mr Jimenez lacks in credentials he makes up for in Trumpian chutzpah. His story is a reminder that not all of the would-be foreign business partners of the Trump Organization are big players and well-connected investors. Some are fervent devotees with boundless faith in the Trump brand, like Mr Jimenez. Others are relatively small-time investors who see the Trump name as a golden ticket to obtain financing or customers.

Alan Garten, the general counsel for the Trump Organization, said in an interview last month that the majority of deals presented to the company "are not consummated, and we do not move forward with them. I would say 5 per cent maybe" are approved. And Trump and his employees have said several times - most recently in a Jan 11 news conference - that the company will make "no new foreign deals" while he is president. Asked about Mr Jimenez's tower, Mr Garten reiterated this month that the firm has no projects in Colombia.

But Mr Jimenez said he and his partners are undeterred. The Bogota towers would take years to build, he said, so he and his associates can wait to get the rights to the Trump name, perhaps when the president is out of office. Or they will be Yun Towers, named for Yun Capital founder Jung Yun. "Ms Yun is looking to develop her own brand," Mr Jimenez said.

It would be hard to find an aspiring Trump partner with a construction resumé as humble as Mr Jimenez's.

The business address of Fortun, his company, is his parents' house in Tunja, the provincial city where he grew up, two hours north of Bogota.

Fortun's portfolio consists of two small apartment buildings in Tunja and some bungalows in another part of rural Colombia. In recent months, Mr Jimenez's search for a site for a high-end tower has rocketed him into the boardrooms of Bogota bankers and property owners who have never heard of him, nor his company.

Mr Jimenez readies for meetings with powerful, silver-haired executives by psyching himself up on the dictums of Trump's bestselling books, which he began reading at age 11, such as Think Big and Kick A** and Time to Get Tough. He takes special inspiration from The Art of the Deal. "Sure, sometimes I'm nervous, but I tell myself to go in those meetings like I own the world," he said in an interview at a friend's insurance office.

Julie Kim, a spokeswoman for Yun Capital, which claims to "specialise in projects ranging from US$50 million to billions," confirmed that Mr Jimenez is indeed the company's business partner in Colombia. But Ms Kim said the firm would not comment about the status of the project in Bogota, nor the nature of the Trump family's potential involvement. The Trump Organization's deals often involve management and licensing contracts rather than cash investments.

The proposed Bogota towers exist only on paper. Eric Trump, the new president's son, who has assumed leadership of the Trump Organization together with his brother, Donald Trump Jr, said during a trip to Uruguay in early January that the company was still looking to Latin America. "There are opportunities in Panama, Colombia," he told an Argentine reporter. "There is a lot to do. It is a tremendous market." Talk of a Trump-themed development in Colombia goes back nearly a decade. The family initially considered building a hotel on a lot near the Caribbean tourist hub of Cartagena, on land owned by former president Cesar Gaviria, according to Camilo Benedetti, who accompanied Trump Jr on a visit to Colombia six years ago.

In an interview, Mr Benedetti said Yun Capital founder Ms Yun introduced him to the Trump family, and he brought Trump Jr to a meeting with President Juan Manuel Santos in 2011. Mr Benedetti's brother, a powerful Colombian senator aligned with Mr Santos, was also present, he said.

Those talks didn't lead to anything firm, Mr Benedetti said, because the Trump family "didn't like the land available". Mr Benedetti's reputation took a hit when he was called to testify in an oil-related corruption scandal and multiple Colombian reports identified him as a target of the investigation, though Mr Benedetti was never charged and said he did nothing wrong.

While the Cartagena deal never took off, an article about the Trump family's interest in Colombia caught the attention of Mr Jimenez, then a university student majoring in business administration.

The article mentioned Yun Capital, so Mr Jimenez sent an email to the company. To his surprise, Ms Yun wrote back. She was interested in building something in Bogota, and Mr Jimenez offered to help, even though he didn't live anywhere near the city."As Trump says, if you're going to think, why not think big?" he said.

Mr Jimenez said Ms Yun was looking for a partner in Colombia who, unlike the well-connected Mr Benedetti, "wasn't involved in anything political". Mr Jimenez was a good fit, at least in that regard.

Ms Yun did not offer Mr Jimenez a formal contact, but she provided him with a "letter of interest" on company stationery. Whenever someone doesn't quite believe Mr Jimenez is working on the Trump project, he whips out Ms Yun's letter, dated Nov 12, 2012. "Dear Mr Mr Jimenez: it is our pleasure to write to you on behalf of Yun Capital to express our interest to invest US$500M USD on a five (5) star mixed use TRUMPdevelopment in Bogota," the letter begins.

Ms Yun has made two trips to Colombia since then to look at potential sites for the Trump towers, Mr Jimenez said. "I'm sure I'll get to meet him someday," Mr Jimenez said. "That's my dream." WP