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Jorge Vergara is a Mexican businessman and film producer. He's the president of Omnilife, who owns football (soccer) clubs: Club Deportivo Guadalajara of Mexico, Deportivo Saprissa of Costa Rica and C.D. Chivas USA of Major League Soccer, and Chivas Hefei. He also produces international movies like "Y tu mama tambien" through Producciones Anhelo.

[edit] Herbalife and Omnilife

Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Vergara once sold tacos on Mexican streets. Back in the 1980s Vergara sold condominiums and timeshares in Manzanillo, Mexico, where he met and began working with John Peterson.

When Peterson became a Herbalife salesperson, he recruited Vergara and together they began selling Herbalife products in Mexico. Since Herbalife had not received Mexican government approval to sell their products, Peterson and Vergara had to smuggle the products into the country. After six months of smuggling the products into Mexico, Herbalife took notice and began the process of getting government approval. Vergara was asked to help get the Herbalife products approved by the Mexican government and was instrumental in helping Herbalife's founder, Mark Hughes deal with the Mexican Government. This gave Vergara insight into how a multi-level company profits and expands into other countries. Vergara was partners with Roger Daley, Jim Fobair and Charlie Ragus. With already the 51% of the company, Vergara acquired the rest of Omnitrition at the end of the deal with his U.S. partners and took the whole control of Omnitrition de Mexico. The company grew rapidly to become Grupo Omnilife, one of the Top 250 companies in Mexico, with 4.5 million distributors in 23 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Vergara has been the director of Omnilife de Mexico since 1991.^[1]

[edit] Film Production

Vergara met Alfonso Cuarón in 1999. His love of films had led him to seek out filmmakers for his corporate movies. Cuarón, however, was more interested in filming Y tu mamá también, and gave Vergara the screenplay. He read it and proposed that they begin production right away and Producciones Anhelo was born. Anhelo would go on to co-produce Guillermo del Toro's El Espinazo Del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone), along with Pedro Almodovar's El Deseo and del Toro's Tequila Gang. Anhelo also produced Sebastián Cordero's Crónicas.

Vergara has always guaranteed his directors creative freedom and the best possible production quality. In 2002, Variety named him one of its Ten Producers to Watch^{[citation needed]}. For the 2004 edition of the Guadalajara Film Festival, Vergara created the JVC Award for Best Director, which was given to Fernando Eimbcke for his feature debut Temporada de patos.

[edit] Chivas

Vergara gained Club Deportivo Guadalajara ownership in 2002. His goal from the get-go was to expand the Chivas brand any and every way possible. Not long after he took ownership in Mexico, while attending the 2003 Major League Soccer All-Star Game at the Home Depot Center, he sat in a pregame press conference and boldly announced intentions to expand Chivas to MLS.

There was a mixed reaction to the announcement, immediate excitement around the high-profile international investor's interest in a league fraught with struggle in contrast to reticence about adding another team in Southern California. Eventually, Vergara and MLS inaugurated Chivas USA in 2004. The Red and White played its first official season in 2005. In four seasons of operation, Chivas USA recorded three straight MLS playoff appearances.^[2]

[edit] External links

• Jorge Vergara Madrigal at the Internet Movie Database

[edit] References