Francisco Macri
Encyclopedia
Francisco Macri is a prominent Argentine businessman and father of Mauricio Macri
, current mayor of Buenos Aires
.
to Lea Garbini and Giorgio Macri. His mother belonged to a prosperous local family, proprietors of an intercity bus
service and supporters of Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini
. His father, in turn, was born to a family of fallen nobility from the Calabria
Region of Italy
. Opponents of il Duce, their kinship to the powerful Pellicano clan allowed them to retain a small postal service carrier in the area around San Giorgio Morgeto
. The eight-year-old Franco and his two younger siblings were sent to an military school in 1938, following their parents' divorce two years earlier, a common fate for the children of dicorced couples under Italian Fascism
; they were reunited with their father in Genoa
five years later.
prompted Giorgio Macri to enter politics, by which he founded a nationalist party, L'Uomo Qualunque
("The Common Man"), ahead of the general elections in June 1946
; following the party's poor showing, however, he departed for Buenos Aires
, settling in the western suburb of San Justo
. He later obtained housing in the Eva Perón Foundation
's Ciudad Evita
community, and was joined by his three children in January 1949. Franco Macri found work in as a construction laborer; he was promoted quickly and held an administrative post within a year, later earning his secondary school diploma at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
and, in 1950, establishing a construction
firm, Urbana.
Obtaining a number of small, public contracts, Urbana ultimately failed, and Macri entered into a partnership, Vimac, in 1953. The firm was boosted by a lucrative contract from Loma Negra
, the leading Argentine cement
producer, for the construction of a new plant near Tandil
in 1955. He married Alicia Blanco Villegas, the daughter of a prominent Tandil physician, in 1958, relocated to Mar del Plata
, and had the first of their four children, Mauricio, in 1959.
district). The 1962 installation of ultraconservative Economy Minister Alvaro Alsogaray
, however, and the latter's policy of paying state contractors and employees with worthless "Ninth of July Bonds" led to Vimac's closure.
Joined by two investors and aided by an economic recovery, in 1964 he fused Demaco with the remains of Vimac to establish Impresit-Sideco. The firm secured a coveted contract with Italian automaker Fiat
, for the construction and maintenance of their Caseros
, and quickly became a leading public works
contractor, notably in the construction of the General Belgrano Bridge
, the Atucha I
and Embalse nuclear power plant
s (Latin America's first), as well as in private works, such as an AGIP
gas pipeline and the Catalinas Norte
office park.
Inheriting his father's interest in film (the elder Macri had worked for the iconic Cinecittà
Studios), he also established MBC, which produced cinema for local directors Leopoldo Torre Nilsson
and Alejandro Doria
, among others.
Having had completed over 30 major public works projects worth over US$1.8 billion since 1964, Macri acquired Philco
and NEC
's Argentine affiliates and gained controlling interest in Impresit and established Socma, a holding company
for his various interests, in 1976. The installation of the last dictatorship
that year, and their appointment of Buenos Aires Mayor Osvaldo Cacciatore
led to the closure of the city's tens of thousands of apartment building incinerators, whose noxious disposal of the city's 3,000 daily tons of refuse had been worsening air quality for decades. Cacciatore had them replaced in 1979 with curbside pickup service awarded to Manliba, a consortium between Impresit-Sideco and Waste Management, Inc.
Macri's marriage ended in separation in 1980 (no provision existed in Argentina for divorce until 1987), and in 1982 he married Cristina Cressier, with whom he had his fifth child. Florencia. The collapse of the Argentine auto industry in 1981-82 allowed Macri to purchase a controlling stake in Sevel, a local joint venture
between Fiat and Peugeot
formed in 1980. The acquisition averted the closure of the European automakers' Argentine plants, and tripled Socma's income.
Macri's finances were undermined, however, from losses stemming from the Banco de Italia y Río de la Plata, of which he was majority shareholder between 1975 and 1980. The subsequent crisis, which resulted from the implosion of Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz
's financial deregulation and strong peso policies, also prompted Macri to take advantage of an exchange rate guarantee enacted by the Central Bank in 1980 for large private borrowers facing sharply higher U.S. dollar payments, a benefit granted to Sevel.
venture in New York
, when in 1979, developer Abraham Hirschfeld
sold him a 75% stake in 30 hectares (75 acres) of Hudson River
front land formerly owned by Penn Central. Planning to develop "Lincoln West," a residential complex, Macri invested US$100 million in mandated public works and related expenses, but could not, ultimately, service a Chase Manhattan loan or meet the city's myriad zoning
demands, selling the land to Donald Trump
in 1985 for US$117 million.
The disappointment was compounded by a heart attack in 1983, and the end of his second marriage in 1986, by which he lost custody of Florencia. He suffered serious losses during the country's repeated currency crises between 1987 and 1990, but gained from a partnership with BellSouth
and Motorola
to form Movicom, the first large-scale Argentine mobile phone
service provider.
A supporter of La Rioja Province
Governor Carlos Menem
ahead of his upset victory in the 1988 Justicialist Party
primaries, Macri broke from the flomboyant President when, after his 1989 election
(which he won on a populist platform), he pursued aggressive free trade
policies that undermined Sevel (by then the largest automaker in Argentina) in favor of cheaper imports. Carlos Grosso, Menem's appointed Mayor of Buenos Aires (a presidential prerogative until 1996), was a managerial employee of Macri's. A vocal Peronist, Grosso had reportedly been spared becoming one of the "disappeared" upon his 1978 military abduction only by Macri's appeal on his behalf to Internal Affairs Minister Albano Harguindeguy
and Apostolic Nuncio Pio Laghi.
The family was shaken by the August 23, 1991, kidnapping of Mauricio Macri
, Franco Macri's eldest son. Freed after two weeks in captivity for a reported ransom of US$6 million, Macri's abduction was executed by four members of the Policía Federal Argentina
, which has policing purview over Buenos Aires (the perpetrators were located only a decade later).
Sevel, the Socma Group's centerpiece at the time, initially benefitted from the boom touched of by Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo
's Convertibility Plan
in 1991, seeing its auto sales grow from 30,000 in 1990 to 200,000 in 1994. The local auto industry was hit hard, however, by the Mexican peso crisis. A fall in sales to 130,000 led the company to divest itself of the Fiat licence in 1996, and Sevel revenues fell by nearly half, to US$1.1 billion. During the Menem-era wholesale privatization
drive, Macri was outmaneuvered in a 1997 bid for the management of the nation's 33 main airports by Eduardo Eurnekian
, though Socma was sold the national postal service in July 1997. Sevel was eventually liquidated, rescinding its Peugeot licence in March 2000, well into the Argentine economic crisis, and the Socma Group's global revenues fell from US$4.5 billion in 1994 to US$2 billion in 2001. Following Sevel's liquidation, Macri was convicted of customs duty evasion relating to an auto export-import scheme via neighboring Uruguay
.
football club since the 1950s, has had a commercial relationship with it for almost as long, dating from his 1960 partnership in a small insurance
firm with the club's president at the time, Alberto Armando. He leveraged this to promote his elder son, Mauricio, as president of the club in 1992, though he was defeated by the incumbent, Antonio Alegre (credited with saving the club from insolvency in the 1980s). Macri was elected in 1995, however, and caused controversy by earmarking a multi-million dollar renovation of the Bombonera
stadium, and granting the contract to Impresit (Macri's construction firm).
Florencia, Macri's youngest daughter, was kidnapped on April 30, 2003, and freed a week later after a ransom of nearly a million dollars was reportedly paid. The federal postal service contract with Socma, through Correos Argentinos, was rescinded, citing the company's debt to taxpayers of US$296 million. Pago Fácil, the electronic funds transfer
service operated by Socma, became one of the group's leading firms, processing over 7 million payments a month. Among the group's most significant real estate developments after 2004 was the Mulieris towers
, in Buenos Aires' Puerto Madero
district.
Macri returned to the auto industry in 2007, when he obtained licensing to produce Chery
automobiles, as well as their parts, which would be assembled in Uruguay. His son, Mauricio, was elected Mayor of Buenos Aires in 2007, and in 2008, the 78-year-old Macri divested Socma of two of its most important firms, Iecsa (construction) and Creaurban (real estate), in favor of Angelo Calcaterra, his nephew. Chery Socma, the joint venture with the Chinese automaker, exported its first units in September 2009.
Macri published a reflection on his over half-century as an Argentine businessman, El futuro es posible, in 2004; he still keeps the suitcase with which he arrived in Argentina in 1949.
Mauricio Macri
Mauricio Macri is an Argentine businessman turned politician, and Head of Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Son of Francisco Macri, a businessman of Italian origin prominent in the industrial and construction sectors, he represented the City of Buenos Aires in the Lower House of...
, current mayor of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
.
Childhood in Italy
Francisco "Franco" Macri was born in RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
to Lea Garbini and Giorgio Macri. His mother belonged to a prosperous local family, proprietors of an intercity bus
Intercity bus
An intercity bus is a bus that carries passengers significant distances between different cities, towns, or other populated areas. Unlike a municipal bus, which has frequent stops throughout a city or town, an intercity bus generally has a single stop at a centralized location within the city, and...
service and supporters of Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. His father, in turn, was born to a family of fallen nobility from the Calabria
Calabria
Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....
Region of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Opponents of il Duce, their kinship to the powerful Pellicano clan allowed them to retain a small postal service carrier in the area around San Giorgio Morgeto
San Giorgio Morgeto
San Giorgio Morgeto is a comune in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 70 km southwest of Catanzaro and about 50 km northeast of Reggio Calabria...
. The eight-year-old Franco and his two younger siblings were sent to an military school in 1938, following their parents' divorce two years earlier, a common fate for the children of dicorced couples under Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
; they were reunited with their father in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
five years later.
Arrival in Argentina
The birth of the Italian RepublicBirth of the Italian Republic
The Italian constitutional referendum which officially took place on 2 June 1946, is a key event of Italian contemporary history. Until 1946, Italy was a kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, kings of Italy since the Risorgimento and previously rulers of Savoy...
prompted Giorgio Macri to enter politics, by which he founded a nationalist party, L'Uomo Qualunque
Uomo Qualunque Front
The Front of the Ordinary Man was a short-lived populist libertarian and poujadist party in Italy...
("The Common Man"), ahead of the general elections in June 1946
Italian general election, 1946
The Italian general election of 2 June 1946 was the first Italian election after World War II and elected 556 deputies to a Constituent Assembly...
; following the party's poor showing, however, he departed for Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, settling in the western suburb of San Justo
San Justo, Buenos Aires
San Justo is a city and the seat of government of La Matanza Partido, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.On the initiative of Judge Lino Lagos, the settlement was founded on December 25th, 1858 on land requisitioned from Justo Villegas, a prominent landowner...
. He later obtained housing in the Eva Perón Foundation
Eva Perón Foundation
The Eva Perón Foundation was a charitable foundation begun by Eva Perón, a prominent Argentine political leader, when she was the First Lady and Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina. It operated from 1948 to 1955...
's Ciudad Evita
Ciudad Evita
Ciudad Evita is a city in La Matanza Partido, within the Greater Buenos Aires metro area. Ciudad Evita currently has about 70,000 inhabitants, and is situated about 20 kilometers from Downtown Buenos Aires and 6 kilometers from Ministro Pistarini International Airport...
community, and was joined by his three children in January 1949. Franco Macri found work in as a construction laborer; he was promoted quickly and held an administrative post within a year, later earning his secondary school diploma at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires is a public high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the tradition of the European gymnasium it provides a free education that includes classical languages such as Latin and Greek. The school is one of the most prestigious in Argentina...
and, in 1950, establishing a construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
firm, Urbana.
Obtaining a number of small, public contracts, Urbana ultimately failed, and Macri entered into a partnership, Vimac, in 1953. The firm was boosted by a lucrative contract from Loma Negra
Loma Negra
Loma Negra Companía Industrial Argentina S.A. is an Argentine manufacturer and the country's leading maker of cement, concrete, and lime.-History:...
, the leading Argentine cement
Cement
In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...
producer, for the construction of a new plant near Tandil
Tandil
-Place name:The name of the city comes from the Mapuche words tan , and lil . It is probably a reference to the Piedra Movediza , a large boulder which stood seemingly miraculously balanced on the edge of a rocky foothill. The Moving Stone toppled on February 29, 1912, and split into two pieces at...
in 1955. He married Alicia Blanco Villegas, the daughter of a prominent Tandil physician, in 1958, relocated to Mar del Plata
Mar del Plata
Mar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is the second largest city of Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" had apparently the sense of "sea of the Río de la Plata region" or "adjoining sea to the Río de la Plata"...
, and had the first of their four children, Mauricio, in 1959.
Leading contractor
Macri started a home builder, Demaco, and purchased a tony Buenos Aires apartment facing Vicente López Plaza (in the heart of the upscale RecoletaRecoleta
Recoleta is a downtown residential neighborhood in the city of Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina; it is an area of great historical and architectural interest, due, particularly to the Recoleta Cemetery located there...
district). The 1962 installation of ultraconservative Economy Minister Alvaro Alsogaray
Álvaro Alsogaray
Álvaro Carlos Alsogaray was an Argentine politician and businessman. Minister of Economy during much of the 1959-62 period, he was one of the principal proponents of economic conservatism in modern Argentina.-Early career:...
, however, and the latter's policy of paying state contractors and employees with worthless "Ninth of July Bonds" led to Vimac's closure.
Joined by two investors and aided by an economic recovery, in 1964 he fused Demaco with the remains of Vimac to establish Impresit-Sideco. The firm secured a coveted contract with Italian automaker Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...
, for the construction and maintenance of their Caseros
Caseros, Buenos Aires
Caseros is a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the head town of the Tres de Febrero Partido which forms part of the Greater Buenos Aires urban conurbation....
, and quickly became a leading public works
Public works
Public works are a broad category of projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community...
contractor, notably in the construction of the General Belgrano Bridge
General Belgrano Bridge
The General Manuel Belgrano Bridge is a road bridge that joins the Argentine cities of Corrientes and Resistencia over the course of the Paraná River...
, the Atucha I
Atucha I nuclear power plant
Atucha I is one of two operational nuclear power plants of Argentina. It is located in the town of Lima, Zárate, Buenos Aires, about from Buenos Aires, on the right-hand shore of the Paraná de las Palmas River....
and Embalse nuclear power plant
Embalse nuclear power plant
The Embalse Nuclear Power Station is one of the two operational nuclear power plants in Argentina. It is located on the southern shore of a reservoir on the Río Tercero, near the city of Embalse, Córdoba, 110 km south-southwest of Córdoba City....
s (Latin America's first), as well as in private works, such as an AGIP
Agip
Agip is an Italian automotive gasoline and diesel retailer established in 1926. It is a subsidiary of the multinational petroleum company Eni.In 2003, Eni S.p.A...
gas pipeline and the Catalinas Norte
Retiro, Buenos Aires
Retiro is a barrio in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Located in the northeast end of the city, Retiro is bordered on the south by the Puerto Madero and San Nicolás wards, and on the west by the Recoleta ward.-Urban character:...
office park.
Inheriting his father's interest in film (the elder Macri had worked for the iconic Cinecittà
Cinecittà
Cinecittà is a large film studio in Rome that is considered the hub of Italian cinema.-History:The studios were founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini and his head of cinema Luigi Freddi for propaganda purposes, under the slogan "Il cinema è l'arma più forte"...
Studios), he also established MBC, which produced cinema for local directors Leopoldo Torre Nilsson
Leopoldo Torre Nilsson
Leopoldo Torre Nilsson , also known as Leo Towers and as Babsy, was an Argentine film director, producer and screenwriter....
and Alejandro Doria
Alejandro Doria
Alejandro Doria was a noted Argentine cinema and television director.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires in 1936, he first worked for Argentine television in 1965 as a writer for a local variety show, Show rambler....
, among others.
Having had completed over 30 major public works projects worth over US$1.8 billion since 1964, Macri acquired Philco
Philco
Philco, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company , was a pioneer in early battery, radio, and television production as well as former employer of Philo Farnsworth, inventor of cathode ray tube television...
and NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
's Argentine affiliates and gained controlling interest in Impresit and established Socma, a holding company
Holding company
A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...
for his various interests, in 1976. The installation of the last dictatorship
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...
that year, and their appointment of Buenos Aires Mayor Osvaldo Cacciatore
Osvaldo Cacciatore
Osvaldo Cacciatore was an Argentine Air Force officer and former de facto Mayor of Buenos Aires during the National Reorganization Process military dictatorship.-Early life:Osvaldo Andrés Cacciatore was born in Buenos Aires in 1924...
led to the closure of the city's tens of thousands of apartment building incinerators, whose noxious disposal of the city's 3,000 daily tons of refuse had been worsening air quality for decades. Cacciatore had them replaced in 1979 with curbside pickup service awarded to Manliba, a consortium between Impresit-Sideco and Waste Management, Inc.
Macri's marriage ended in separation in 1980 (no provision existed in Argentina for divorce until 1987), and in 1982 he married Cristina Cressier, with whom he had his fifth child. Florencia. The collapse of the Argentine auto industry in 1981-82 allowed Macri to purchase a controlling stake in Sevel, a local joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
between Fiat and Peugeot
Peugeot
Peugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second largest carmaker based in Europe.The family business that precedes the current Peugeot company was founded in 1810, and manufactured coffee mills and bicycles. On 20 November 1858, Emile Peugeot applied for the lion...
formed in 1980. The acquisition averted the closure of the European automakers' Argentine plants, and tripled Socma's income.
Macri's finances were undermined, however, from losses stemming from the Banco de Italia y Río de la Plata, of which he was majority shareholder between 1975 and 1980. The subsequent crisis, which resulted from the implosion of Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz
José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz
José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was an Argentine executive and policy maker. He served as Minister of the Economy under de facto President Jorge Rafael Videla between 1976 and 1981, and shaped economic policy during the self-styled National Reorganization Process military dictatorship.-Early...
's financial deregulation and strong peso policies, also prompted Macri to take advantage of an exchange rate guarantee enacted by the Central Bank in 1980 for large private borrowers facing sharply higher U.S. dollar payments, a benefit granted to Sevel.
Ventures and misadventures
He entered into a valuable real estateReal estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
venture in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, when in 1979, developer Abraham Hirschfeld
Abraham Hirschfeld
Abraham Jacob "Abe" Hirschfeld , was a Polish-born New York real estate developer known for his eccentric endeavors, love for publicity, $2 neckties, strong Yiddish accent, and murder-for-hire plot against a former business partner.Hirschfeld was born in Tarnów, Poland and immigrated to the British...
sold him a 75% stake in 30 hectares (75 acres) of Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
front land formerly owned by Penn Central. Planning to develop "Lincoln West," a residential complex, Macri invested US$100 million in mandated public works and related expenses, but could not, ultimately, service a Chase Manhattan loan or meet the city's myriad zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...
demands, selling the land to Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
in 1985 for US$117 million.
The disappointment was compounded by a heart attack in 1983, and the end of his second marriage in 1986, by which he lost custody of Florencia. He suffered serious losses during the country's repeated currency crises between 1987 and 1990, but gained from a partnership with BellSouth
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
to form Movicom, the first large-scale Argentine mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
service provider.
A supporter of La Rioja Province
La Rioja Province (Argentina)
La Rioja is a one of the provinces of Argentina and is located in the west of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Catamarca, Córdoba, San Luis and San Juan.-History:...
Governor Carlos Menem
Carlos Menem
Carlos Saúl Menem is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He is currently an Argentine National Senator for La Rioja Province.-Early life:...
ahead of his upset victory in the 1988 Justicialist Party
Justicialist Party
The Justicialist Party , or PJ, is a Peronist political party in Argentina, and the largest component of the Peronist movement.The party was led by Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, until his death on October 27, 2010. The current Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de...
primaries, Macri broke from the flomboyant President when, after his 1989 election
Argentine general election, 1989
The Argentine general election of 1989 was held on 14 May. Voters chose both the President and their legislators and with a turnout of 85.3%, it produced the following results:-President:aAbstentions.-Argentine Congress:...
(which he won on a populist platform), he pursued aggressive free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
policies that undermined Sevel (by then the largest automaker in Argentina) in favor of cheaper imports. Carlos Grosso, Menem's appointed Mayor of Buenos Aires (a presidential prerogative until 1996), was a managerial employee of Macri's. A vocal Peronist, Grosso had reportedly been spared becoming one of the "disappeared" upon his 1978 military abduction only by Macri's appeal on his behalf to Internal Affairs Minister Albano Harguindeguy
Albano Harguindeguy
Albano Eduardo Harguindeguy was a general of the Argentine Army, and the interior minister of Argentina under dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, during the National Reorganization Process ....
and Apostolic Nuncio Pio Laghi.
The family was shaken by the August 23, 1991, kidnapping of Mauricio Macri
Mauricio Macri
Mauricio Macri is an Argentine businessman turned politician, and Head of Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Son of Francisco Macri, a businessman of Italian origin prominent in the industrial and construction sectors, he represented the City of Buenos Aires in the Lower House of...
, Franco Macri's eldest son. Freed after two weeks in captivity for a reported ransom of US$6 million, Macri's abduction was executed by four members of the Policía Federal Argentina
Policía Federal Argentina
The Policía Federal Argentina is a police force of the Argentine federal government. The PFA has detachments throughout the country, but its main responsibility is policing the Federal District of Buenos Aires...
, which has policing purview over Buenos Aires (the perpetrators were located only a decade later).
Sevel, the Socma Group's centerpiece at the time, initially benefitted from the boom touched of by Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo
Domingo Cavallo
Domingo Felipe "Mingo" Cavallo is an Argentine economist and politician. He has a long history of public service and is known for implementing the Convertibilidad plan, which fixed the dollar-peso exchange rate at 1:1 between 1991 and 2001, which brought the Argentine inflation rate down from over...
's Convertibility Plan
Argentine Currency Board
The Argentine Currency Board pegged the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar between 1991 and 2002 in an attempt to eliminate hyperinflation and stimulate economic growth. While it initially met with considerable success, the board's actions ultimately failed. In contrast of what most people think,...
in 1991, seeing its auto sales grow from 30,000 in 1990 to 200,000 in 1994. The local auto industry was hit hard, however, by the Mexican peso crisis. A fall in sales to 130,000 led the company to divest itself of the Fiat licence in 1996, and Sevel revenues fell by nearly half, to US$1.1 billion. During the Menem-era wholesale privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
drive, Macri was outmaneuvered in a 1997 bid for the management of the nation's 33 main airports by Eduardo Eurnekian
Eduardo Eurnekian
Eduardo Eurnekian is an Argentinian businessman.-Rise to prominence:Eduardo Eurnekian was born to immigrants from Armenia, in 1932...
, though Socma was sold the national postal service in July 1997. Sevel was eventually liquidated, rescinding its Peugeot licence in March 2000, well into the Argentine economic crisis, and the Socma Group's global revenues fell from US$4.5 billion in 1994 to US$2 billion in 2001. Following Sevel's liquidation, Macri was convicted of customs duty evasion relating to an auto export-import scheme via neighboring Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
.
Legacy
Macri, a fan of the Boca JuniorsBoca Juniors
Club Atlético Boca Juniors is an Argentine sports club based in La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is best known for its professional football team, which currently plays in the Primera División....
football club since the 1950s, has had a commercial relationship with it for almost as long, dating from his 1960 partnership in a small insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
firm with the club's president at the time, Alberto Armando. He leveraged this to promote his elder son, Mauricio, as president of the club in 1992, though he was defeated by the incumbent, Antonio Alegre (credited with saving the club from insolvency in the 1980s). Macri was elected in 1995, however, and caused controversy by earmarking a multi-million dollar renovation of the Bombonera
Estadio Alberto J. Armando
The Estadio Alberto J. Armando is a stadium located in the La Boca district of Buenos Aires. Widely known as La Bombonera due to its shape, with a "flat" stand on one side of the pitch and three steep stands round the rest of the stadium...
stadium, and granting the contract to Impresit (Macri's construction firm).
Florencia, Macri's youngest daughter, was kidnapped on April 30, 2003, and freed a week later after a ransom of nearly a million dollars was reportedly paid. The federal postal service contract with Socma, through Correos Argentinos, was rescinded, citing the company's debt to taxpayers of US$296 million. Pago Fácil, the electronic funds transfer
Electronic funds transfer
Electronic funds transfer is the electronic exchange or transfer of money from one account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, through computer-based systems....
service operated by Socma, became one of the group's leading firms, processing over 7 million payments a month. Among the group's most significant real estate developments after 2004 was the Mulieris towers
Mulieris towers
Torres Mulieris are two towers of 44 floors each. They are located in the Puerto Madero neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Developed by Creaurban, a unit of the Macri Group, the two residential buildings were completed in 2009, and became the fifth-tallest buildings in Argentina....
, in Buenos Aires' Puerto Madero
Puerto Madero
Puerto Madero, also known within the urban planning community as the Puerto Madero Waterfront, is a barrio of the Argentine capital at Buenos Aires CBD, occupying a significant portion of the Río de la Plata riverbank and representing the latest architectural trends in the city of Buenos...
district.
Macri returned to the auto industry in 2007, when he obtained licensing to produce Chery
Chéry
Chéry is a commune in the Cher department in the Centre region of France.-Geography:An area of farming and forestry, comprising the main village and a hamlet, situated in the valley of the river Arnon some south of Vierzon, at the junction of the D75, D165 and the D68 roads.-Population:-External...
automobiles, as well as their parts, which would be assembled in Uruguay. His son, Mauricio, was elected Mayor of Buenos Aires in 2007, and in 2008, the 78-year-old Macri divested Socma of two of its most important firms, Iecsa (construction) and Creaurban (real estate), in favor of Angelo Calcaterra, his nephew. Chery Socma, the joint venture with the Chinese automaker, exported its first units in September 2009.
Macri published a reflection on his over half-century as an Argentine businessman, El futuro es posible, in 2004; he still keeps the suitcase with which he arrived in Argentina in 1949.