A prominent Brazilian private equity investor and his wife paid $3 million earlier this month for a 5,578-square-foot lakefront home in Windermere’s Keene’s Pointe community.
Lincoln Pimentel Martins and his wife, Bianca M. Orsi Martins, made the purchase through an affiliate LLC on Feb. 12. Located in the 6100 block of Grosvenor Shore Drive, the 2.65-acre lakefront property features a one-story home with five bedrooms and 5.5 baths.
Built by Stonebridge Homes in 2013, the Spanish-Mediterranean style home has 13 rooms overall, with amenities like a wine cellar, office, media room with movie theater-type seats, swimming pool and boat dock.
Originally listed at $3.3 million in late October, the sale was brokered by Florida Connexion Properties. No mortgage was taken out by the Martins, per county records.
This is the second home purchase in Windermere for Lincoln and Bianca, who still own a 4,221-square-foot home in the 11000 block of Camden Park Drive bought for $735,000 in July 2011.
Pimental Martins earned a bachelor’s degree from BYU and MBA from Ohio University, and is CEO of Grupo Sforza, a family holding company based in the city of Campinas near Sao Paulo, that invests in retail, education and real estate companies in South America.
One of Grupo Sforza’s brands is Ronaldo Soccer Academy, for which the Martins began developing five franchise locations in Florida last year, including one in southwest Orlando in late December. The five acres bought for that development is registered under an LLC whose principals are members of the Martins family.
Pimentel Martins is the son of Carlos Wizard Martins, one of Brazil’s richest retail businessmen, who in 1987 started Wizard Idiomas, which would become one of Brazil’s largest private English school chains, with more than 1,200 locations at its peak in the 2000s.
Pimentel Martins and his twin brother, Charles, pursued expansion of the Wizard business by creating Grupo Multi Holding, which began to transform in 2008 into an education conglomerate with the acquisition of other education and language businesses.
Through the late 2000s, Grupo Multi had more than 3,500 language and professional course schools in Brazil, and drew tens of millions of dollars in investment from private funds.
In December 2013, media company Pearson PLC of the United Kingdom acquired Grupo Multi for BRL 2 billion ($721 million at the time).
Pimentel Martins, his brother Charles and father Carlos left Grupo Multi after the sale, and later founded Grupo Sforza.
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