Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, President of OHL, Receives the MDI Award for Best Businessperson in Construction and Property Development

Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, President of OHL, has received the MDI Award for Best Businessperson in Construction and Property Development 2009 which is annually awarded by the Masters in Management of Construction and Property Development Companies from the Madrid Polytechnic University’s Advanced Technical School of Architecture.

The award ceremony took place in the Advanced Technical School of Architecture’s ceremony hall. The General Secretary of the Spanish Construction Development Association, Manuel Marti, gave a presentation of Juan-Miguel Villar Mir’s business figure in which he said that “he is a worthy recipient of the prize, being that he has shown his great worth as a businessperson on numerous occasions in achieving what is most difficult, refloating companies in adverse circumstances”. Manuel Marti affirmed that “Juan-Miguel Villar Mir is a pillar of the sector with a great career under his belt”.

In his speech, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir talked about the grave crisis that is affecting the property sector, mentioning the efforts and strategies followed by his company for more than eight years in order to anticipate and overcome such a situation. It was for that reason that he had insisted on his company not getting involved in property since 2002, the reduction of housing contracts with private developers in the last few years, the concentrating of their investments in concessions, a big effort for the internationalization of the company, and the strict criteria of solvency and indebtedness that has allowed them to maintain a sound and rigorous financial structure.

He went into greater depth regarding OHL’s international activities, operating in 22 countries across four continents, in which their concessions take priority over construction and whose portfolio and business parameters are currently stronger and broader abroad than at home. At present OHL is the seventh largest concessionaire in the world and Latin America’s largest private investor in infrastructure concessions.

Presiding over the ceremony in which Juan-Miguel Villar Mir received the MDI Award was the Director of Madrid’s Advanced Technical School of Architecture, Luis Maldonado. It is a prestigious award that in the past has been bestowed on other outstanding business figures such as Anton Duran and Rafael del Pino, who Juan-Miguel Villar Mir mentioned with sincere words of friendship and respect; Jose Maria Entrecanales, Luis Marsa, Alicia and Esther Koplowitz, Martin Eyries, Gabriel Escarrer, the Regional Housing Company, Florentino Perez, Rafael Santamaria, Manuel Jove, Xavier Solano, Luis de Rivero, Jose Manuel Entrecanales and the last awarded to Juan Antonio Carpintero.