Gregorio Pérez Companc

Gregorio " Goyo " Pérez Companc ( born October 12, 1934 in Buenos Aires, often mistakenly Pérez ) is an Argentine entrepreneur who is on the list of billionaires by Forbes Magazine. In the list for 2009, he was listed with an estimated fortune of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars to place 379 of the richest in the world.

Life

Perez Compancs origin is a matter of speculation. Although his birth certificate has never been located, it is certain that he was born in 1934. According to information from the book " Los Dueños de la Argentina " by Luis Majul he was registered on August 23, 1945 with the name Jorge Gregorio Bazán as a legitimate son of Benito Bazán and Juana Molina Emiliana. But majul also reports that other sources say that he was a biological son Ramón Perez Acuñas with a maid. He was apparently adopted in 1946 by his wife Margarita de Perez Companc or recognized as a son. Perez Companc visited the Colegio La Salle in Buenos Aires, but was considered a bad student and was not accepted by his siblings Jorge Joaquín, Carlos and Alicia, the biological children of Perez Acuña and Companc as equivalent. In contrast, de Perez Companc certain on her deathbed that he was on equal footing with his siblings.

He lived most of the time withdrawn on a hacienda his adoptive mother, on which he the cattle and dairy industry devoted himself, while his siblings, especially Carlos, the family managten. Greogorio was considered unfit for the business. In 1961 he married María Carmen " Munchi " Sundblad, with whom he seven children (Margarita, Jorge, Rosario, Pilar, Cecilia, Pablo and Luis ) has; his eldest daughter died in 1984 at age 19 in a car accident in the Patagonia region.

After the death of his stepbrother Carlos 1977 his sister Alicia took him into the company's management. ( Her brother Jorge Joaquín had died in 1959. ) Since the company was mainly active in the energy industry, were good political contacts and discrete behaviors important characteristics that Greogorio brought back to run the business in the 1980s. The company benefited in particular from his good contacts in the context of the privatization of state enterprises under Carlos Menem ( see below). Since Alicia died in 1998 and none of his siblings had left descendants, Gregorio and his family are now the sole owner of the company.

Perez Companc occurs very rarely in appearance and conveys the image of an ascetic, frugal man who has built a great distance to most other Argentine business leaders who are present through festivals in the Company's news. It is reported that he attended Catholic services daily. He donated significant amounts for particular Catholic social projects and institutions of Opus Dei, including between 50 and 80 million pesos (at the time with a fixed exchange rate of 1:1 to the U.S. dollar ) for the campus Pilar operated ( with University Hospital ) in Buenos Aires by the Opus Dei Universidad Austral. His company and the Perez Companc Foundation have also helped to make the Universidad Católica Argentina to one of the most prestigious universities in Argentina.

He is regarded as a follower of CA River Plate and collects old cars. Among other things, he earned the 2007 Ferrari 330TRI/LM of 1962, with Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien won the 24 - hour race at Le Mans in 1962, a Ferrari 340/375 MM Berlinetta and a 340MM. He also owns a Ferrari F50 and a Ferrari Enzo Ferrari. He plans a car museum with its collection.

His sons are active in Autosport: Jorge Luis and take part in the World Rally Championship with the Munchis World Rally Team in part. Her brother Pablo joined in 2007 as a rookie in the Indy Pro Series Indy Racing League, but was injured in March in an accident in his first race at the Homestead -Miami Speedway very hard on the legs, so that it for the rest of the Championship failed and will incur no formula race more because his legs were very moved by injury and 14 operations to suffer.

His wife is rooted as Gregorio Perez Companc and his adoptive mother in agriculture. She was for many years chairman of the Argentine Association for breeding Jersey cattle. Since the 1990s, she established a small chain of ice cream parlors named Munchi 's selling ice cream, which is made exclusively from the milk of Jersey cows. The parent company of the chain is located in Belén de Escobar in the province of Buenos Aires, where the family still lives and owns an estate of 262 hectares. Here are also the cattle family farm and another project of Munchi Sundblad: Temaikén, a large, private zoo owned by a foundation ( Biopark ), in which the animals are not in cages.

The family also owns lands in Patagonia, including in Puerto San Julián, where also farming is done and a gold and silver mine is where the family is involved, and 60,000 hectares of forest in the province of Misiones ( near the Iguaçu waterfalls ) and 100,000 hectares of pine and eucalyptus forests in the province of Corrientes and 10,000 hectares of willow and poplar forests in the delta of the Paraná.

Business

Pérez Compancs group of companies of Grupo Perez Companc SA, is the largest of Argentina.

It was created in 1946 when the brothers Carlos and Jorge Joaquín Perez Companc with the compensation of land expropriation and with the support of representatives of the Catholic Action and the Benedictine Abbot of Buenos Aires in the United States four vessels acquired, with which they built a maritime transport company that routes served between Buenos Aires and southern Argentina. In 1959, the company acquired an oil concession, which was based on the realignment of the company, assisted in the subsequent period the prospered through good relations with various governments under President Arturo Frondizi. In the era Menem (1989-1999), Gregorio Perez Companc was already active in corporate governance, the Group acquired a significant stake in state-owned enterprises such as the oil refinery of San Lorenzo. Transportadora de Gas del Sur and a stake in Telecom Argentina

Since the 1990s his sons Jorge and Luis are leading active in the group. Jorge is since 1997 official Vice President of PC Holding. Under his leadership, the company was restructured, with advice from McKinsey, which among other things, the sale of most acquired in the course of privatization under Menem investments included, including investments in Telecom Argentina, Telefónica de Argentina, shopping centers and hotels and Metrogás. The most significant sales was the majority stake in the bank Banco del Río de la Plata, which was sold to Banco Santander in 1997. A residual share of 18.5 % fall in 2000 at Merrill Lynch.

First, the strategy entailed on making the oil business to the core area of ​​the holding company. However, in the second half of the 1990s, oil prices fell, the intensity of competition in the oil sector increased worldwide and the Group in the acquisition of YPF was outbid by the Spanish Repsol, this strategy has been changed. The oil and energy company Pecom Energía was initially, despite Offered by Shell, Enron and others but not sold. 2002, the majority of Pecom Energía was eventually sold to the Brazilian Petrobras. The decision should be guided by fallen within the family, with Perez Compancs woman assumed considerable importance.

The entry of the sons in the group brought with him that the three previously leading manager and consultant, Roque Maccarone, Eduardo Casabal and Oscar Vicente, gradually left the group.

With the revenues generated from the sale of the investment, the Group acquired a number of companies in the food sector, including Molinos Río de la Plata, which was acquired for approximately 380 million U.S. dollars in 1999. The agricultural and agro-industrial sector is therefore currently the focus of the group Perez Companc. To company part for Agriculture were in 2001 ten agro-industrial companies with more than 87,000 acres of land on which cattle and dairy farming and wheat, corn, soy, sunflower and rice are grown.

Fundación Perez Companc

The Family Foundation Fundación Perez Companc, which was founded in memory of Margarita Companc of their children, and since the death of his sister Alicia also Gregorio Perez Companc is subject to, among other things, provides work for charitable purposes. She was / is, however, also owner of part of the assets and investments of Perez Companc group and achieved ( e) from dividends and other profit sharing.

However, it was in June 2004 with retroactive effect to 29 April 1988 by the Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos ( AFIP ), the Argentine federal tax authorities, the exception deprived of the income tax, so " hundreds of millions of pesos " were reclaimed in tax savings. The reasoning was that the Foundation as a financial holding company had worked, people who belonged to Perez Companc Group, had paid gratuities and transfers investments abroad. Accordingly, the Foundation had tax law acted as a " disguised Holding ". It was the largest among a number of other Argentine Holdings with a comparable model. The Chairman of the Foundation, Carlos Cupi, and contradicted the stated flowed the obtained gains of Perez Companc Group to social purposes such as the health center Fleni, the Universidad Austral and Temaikén. Recent evidence in the case could not be found for this item.