Percival Farquhar (1865–1953) was an American investor and financier with extensive interests in Latin America and pre-Soviet Russia, including railways, mines, hotels, and restaurants.

His father wrote,[2]: 275–294  "In the meantime he had become associated with me as a partner in my business in New York, from which he drifted into financial operations of larger scope, his activities in this direction leading him to Cuba, South America, and Europe."

His father's agricultural equipment business had long had a sizeable export component, selling to distributors who resold in Latin America, South Africa, Australia, Russia, and other places.

He owned railways and mines in Russia and dealt personally with Lenin during the years when those assets were being nationalized and foreign specialists were held over to assist.

A history journal article of 1937 described the way that Farquhar's syndicate during this period was viewed by Brazilians nervous about Yankee ambitions and by British competitors.

[5] According to the writer and former minister Ronaldo Costa Couto, Farquhar's empire was comparable to those of Count Francisco Matarazzo and Irineu Evangelista de Souza, The Viscount of Mauá.

[9] The beginning of the First World War in 1914, cut off his main source of resources and financing, and left Farquhar's already precarious empire—which had created the practicing of issuing debt based on debt—extremely indebted, causing it to crumble.

Although the dimensions and scope of his economic activity are impressive due to the large sums of money involved and the fervor of his apparently charitable activities, a more detailed examination of Farquhar's businesses in Brazil shows that they frequently led to the deaths of thousands of native people, the ecological destruction of entire states,[14] abandoned railways, bankruptcies, and even civil wars.

Charles A. Gauld writes: The genius of Farquhar lay more in his vision and capacity to raise money to expand than in the efficient management or cost control in his 38 businesses.

To fill these needs in Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century, Farquhar built in São Paulo the elegant Rotisserie Sportsman and imported from the famous Elisée Palace Hotel in Paris the chef Henri Galon, Fernando de Morais tells us in his book Chatô – O Rei do Brasil (Chatô – The King of Brazil).