Julio Mario Santo Domingo

{{Person file | name = Julio Mario Santo Domingo | image = | size = | description = | birth name = Julio Mario Santo Domingo | date of birth = {{ | place of birth = Panama City, Panama | date of death = October 7, 2011 (age 87) | place of death = New York, United States | nationality = Colombian | occupation = Businessman | heritage = | parents = Mario Santo Domingo
Beatriz Helena Pumarejo Vengoechea | spouse = Edyala Braga
Beatrice Dávila | children = Julio Mario Santo Domingo Braga, Alejandro and Andrés Santo Domingo | relatives = Alberto Pumarejo
(maternal uncle)
Tatiana Santo Domingo (granddaughter) }} Julio Mario Santo Domingo Pumarejo (Panama, October 16, 1923-New York, October 7, 2011). was a Colombian businessman and industrialist.

For decades he was the richest man in Colombia, in recent years he became the second, and the 108th in the world according to Forbes magazine (2011 edition), with an estimated 9.5 billion US dollars, He was the main shareholder of the Bavaria Business Group and Valorem, with which he controlled more than 100 companies around the world, including Caracol Televisión and the newspaper El Espectador. In addition, he was a member of the Barranquilla Group.

Career

Santo Domingo acquired the Bavaria brewery in 1969 due to the nationalization of the family of German businessman Leo Siegfried Kopp. The descendants of the Kopp family have not been compensated so far. In 2005 it carried out a financial transaction in which Cervecería Bavaria S.A. merged with the South African company SAB Miller. In this merger, Santo Domingo acquired 15.1% of SAB Miller, thus becoming the second shareholder of the second largest brewer in the world.

The business magnate Julio Mario Santo Domingo not only owned the Bavaria Brewery (a company that he merged with the South African SABMiller), but also another range of well-known companies in Colombia such as the airline Avianca, sold to businessman Germán Efromovich, owner of Synergy Group; the telecommunications company Celumóvil, sold to the American Bellsouth and today owned by the Spanish Telefónica Movistar; the internet and television company TV Cable, whose current owner is the Mexican magnate Carlos Slim Helú through Telmex; the petrochemical company that produces and markets prolipropylene resin Propilco S.A., which was acquired by Ecopetrol; Sofasa, a Renault and Toyota automobile assembler (Toyota separated from Sofasa in early 2010, forming Toyota de Colombia S.A); the Colombian headquarters of the company Aluminios Reynolds; the helicopter air transport company Helicol and Caracol Radio, in which he sold his entire shareholding to the Prisa Group of Spain between 1999 and 2003.

In May 1980, he was appointed Ambassador of Colombia to China by President Julio César Turbay, remaining in office until 1983.

Controversies

Bavaria, traditionally owned by several shareholders, began to carry out a series of operations to acquire companies and invest in sectors that were not typical of the brewing activity or the beverage sector. He invested large sums of money in companies in which Santo Domingo directly had a minority stake. Bavaria later became an immense holding company with investments in the aeronautical, forestry, aluminum and chemical sectors, among others. Bavaria's profits potentiated Santo Domingo's investment in these companies by increasing its share package in them, which ended up multiplying its fortune at the expense of the resources of the once decentralized Bavaria, which ended up buying out the other shareholders in their entirety with the profits. of the other companies to be the absolute owner of this one. In business, this procedure by Santo Domingo was seen as unethical but not illegal under Colombian law.

Many of the companies that were part of the Santo Domingo Group, in which Bavaria resources were invested, had to be subsequently sold to foreign investors due to the losses they caused to Santo Domingo, a product precisely of investing their profits in recover the brewery financially and subsequently buy it (Avianca, Reforestadora de Pereira, Caracol Radio, Celumóvil, among others).

In the 90's, Carlos Ardila Lülle and Julio Mario Santo Domingo (the most important businessmen in the country at that time) despite their rivalry had a truce not to venture into each other's respective core businesses, a truce that was broken when in 1994 Santo Domingo entered the non-alcoholic beverage market with the brand Refrescos Bavaria and its soft drinks Konga, Link, soda Wizz and Brisa water, in addition to venturing into Jugos Bavaria and its juice product Tutti Frutti, taking advantage of the enormous profits of Bavaria that was already under his control. In response, Ardila Lülle opened a brewery in Tocancipá in 1995 to sell products such as Cerveza y Malta Leona, Cerveza Caribe, Cerveza Cristal Oro and Pearl Beer. In the end, Ardila Lülle lost the battle. After accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars of debt as a result of the Colombian recession of 1999, Ardila Lülle sold the brewery and its brands to Santo Domingo the following year, which that same year exited the soft drink business after having won the pulse of Ardila Lülle, leaving thousands of people without work by closing the bottling plants of Refrescos Bavaria, leaving only Brisa water produced in its brewing plants. Later in 2006, Santo Domingo and SABMiller would sell the brand and the Tutti Frutti juice processing plant to Ardila Lülle and, in 2008, they would sell Brisa to The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola FEMSA.

Although the Santo Domingo family continues to be important investors in Colombia, Alejandro Santo Domingo (son of Julio Mario and current head of the Valorem family conglomerate) and the other members of the family are based in New York with US nationality, from where they manage their Colombian businesses.

Social works

In 2010, the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Foundation, in association with district authorities of the city of Bogotá, put the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Public Library Cultural Center at the service of the community, as a payment agreement for a fine of 55,000 million pesos that the Santo Domingo family had with the district. The complex, of 23 thousand square meters, is made up of a mega library, a theater for concerts, shows and theatrical productions, a studio theater, Internet rooms, a playroom, a sound library and a specialized collection of documents, artifacts and related elements for early stimulation. of the kids. It has cutting-edge technology such as interactive boards in multiple classrooms and training rooms, videoconferencing equipment for simultaneous events, 20 points for video playback compatible with bluray technology, 100 Internet access points available to the user in the different rooms, loan of laptops and wireless Internet access network.

This imposing complex, located in the Parque Zonal San José de Bavaria, on Avenida Calle 170 No. 67-51, is surrounded by a 5.5 hectare park with wide platforms, tree-lined green areas, pedestrian paths and games children. And to facilitate access for visitors, it has 340 underground parking spaces and 140 cycle parking spaces.

The most important thing about this new cultural space, located north of the city, is that it will benefit 1.2 million inhabitants of the towns of Suba and Usaquén, among whom are 280,000 children and young people of school age.

It is worth highlighting that this cultural center is the result of the public-private alliance between the Santo Domingo family, which paid a fine of 55,000 million pesos to the district with the construction of the building, and the Mayor's Office of Bogotá, which gave up 5.5 hectares of land and invested 33.2 billion pesos to advance the management of restitution of the area, the construction of parking lots, the park and the surrounding roads.

The project was carried out under the inter-institutional cooperation agreement signed between companies of the Santo Domingo family and the Ministry of Education, the Administrative Department of the Public Space Ombudsman, the Administrative Department of District Planning, the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Sports, the District Institute of Recreation and Sports, Bibloamigos and the Institute of Urban Development.

Since 1960, the year of its creation as Fundación Barranquilla, the Foundation has carried out important projects such as the Universidad del Norte, the José Celestino Mutis Atlantic Experimental Institute, the Santo Domingo School of Arts and Crafts (all located in Barranquilla) and the Barbacoas Ecological Educational Institute in Barú. The Foundation also provides support to organizations such as the Barranquilla Carnival Foundation (which seeks to preserve this cultural event) and Parques Como Vamos (an initiative to monitor and ensure the conservation of the Colombian National Natural Parks system), in addition to financing and building directly projects of Social Interest Housing (VIS), employability, entrepreneurship and basic care for vulnerable populations.

Julio Mario Santo Domingo lived on Park Avenue in New York since the late 70s. He also owned residences in Bogotá, Paris and a private island in Barú, Colombia. Santo Domingo died on the night of Friday, October 7, 2011, in New York City at the age of 87 from natural causes.

Private life

Family

He was the son of the Barranquilla industrialist Mario Santo Domingo, one of the pioneers of Colombian commercial aviation, and Beatriz Pumarejo. He was married twice, the first to the Brazilian aristocrat Edyala Braga, with whom he had Julio Mario Santo Domingo Braga (known as Julio Mario Santo Domingo Jr.), who died of cancer in 2009, and the second with Samaria Beatrice Dávila (of whom he is a distant relative), having Alejandro Santo Domingo Dávila, who continued the administration of his father's businesses when he died, and Andrés Santo Domingo Dávila, who was inclined towards the arts and culture. music.

His son Julio Mario Santo Domingo Jr. married the Brazilian socialite Vera Rechulski, with whom he had Tatiana Santo Domingo, current wife of Andrea Casiraghi, member of the royal family of the Principality of Monaco, and Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, who became a renowned New York disc jockey who entertains parties for millionaires like Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea FC.

Business portfolio

Media sector

• Caracol Television
• International Caracol
• Caracol Novelas
• WGen TV
• The Spectator
• Revista Cromos
• Blu Radio
• Cine Colombia

Industrial sector

• SABMiller
• Cervecería Leone S.A.
• Biofilm S.A
• Refocosta S.A
• Carolina Pérez S.A.
• D1 stores

Service sector

• Suppla S.A.
• Suppla Cargo S.A.S.
• Supla S.A.S. Customs Agency Level I
• Serviceuticos Ltda
• Terranum Group

Sports sector

• [[Millonarios Football]

Club|Millonarios F.C.]] National