Richard Sinkin, Ph.D., is the founder and Managing Director of InterAmerican Holdings Co. (IAH), a diversified consulting, management, and investment firm headquartered in San Diego, California, with an office in Mexico City. Founded in 1987, the company specializes in structuring and implementing investment and sales activities in Latin America. IAH principals have managed the direct investment of over $500 million in Latin America, including the start-up of 26 manufacturing operations in Mexico that now occupy over 2 million square feet and employ over 3,000 direct workers. IAH also provides in-depth market research for companies seeking to sell products and services in Latin America.
IAH has managed two investment funds that provided capital to manufacturing companies seeking to set up operations in Mexico and currently has strategic relations with several private equity funds to acquire U.S. and Mexican manufacturing companies. IAH recently acquired a 1 million square foot automotive engine production plant in Mexico from Renault. Sinkin is currently organizing a $100 million private equity fund, the InterAmerican Value Fund, that will invest in undervalued Mexican companies as well as U.S. and Canadian companies that would benefit from production in Mexico.
Prior to forming IAH, Sinkin, who holds a doctorate degree in Latin American history, was the Vice President of the Institute of the Americas in La Jolla, California, one of the nation’s leading centers of private and public sector collaboration on Latin American business issues.
During the 1980s, Sinkin was a director of Texas Bank in San Antonio, Texas, where he assisted in the development of the bank’s international financial operations in the Mexican capital markets. And from 1981 to 1986, he was the Executive Director of the Latin America Studies Association, the world’s largest organization of Latin American specialists. In 1979, he was appointed Senior Policy Analyst at the U.S. Department of State, Agency for International Development, where he directed an international development program with an annual budget of $100 million.
From 1969 to 1986 he was a professor of Latin American history at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published a book on 19th-century Mexican political development and more than a dozen articles on Mexican politics and economics. Sinkin is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, and the San Diego Dialogue in San Diego. He received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
