HORST PAULMANN

Horst Paulmann was born in 1935 in Kassel, Germany. His family emigrated to Chile when he was a child, part of the post-war German immigration wave to South America.

He grew up in southern Chile and started his first business at 19: a small restaurant. From that restaurant, he moved into retail, opening his first supermarket in the 1960s.

The real inflection point came in 1963 when he founded Las Brisas, a supermarket in Temuco, Chile. That grew into the Jumbo supermarket chain, which became one of Chile's dominant grocery brands.

By the 1980s, he was expanding aggressively. He acquired Paris department stores, the Easy home improvement chain (think Home Depot for Latin America), and Santa Isabel supermarkets.

In 2003, he consolidated everything under the Cencosud holding company and took it public on the Santiago stock exchange.

Paulmann didn't stop at Chile's borders. He expanded into Argentina (buying the Disco and Vea supermarket chains), Brazil (acquiring Bretas and GBarbosa), Peru (Wong and Metro supermarkets), and Colombia (Jumbo and Metro).

At its peak, Cencosud was operating in five countries with over 1,000 locations. The company reported revenues of over $18 billion in recent years.

That makes Cencosud South America's largest retailer by store count.

Cencosud (founder and chairman), Jumbo supermarkets, Paris department stores, Easy home improvement stores, Santa Isabel, Wong (Peru), Costanera Center (Santiago's tallest building)

Paulmann is a pure operator. He doesn't buy financial assets or trade stocks.

He builds and acquires retail businesses, integrates them, and scales them across geographies. Every investment decision is about physical stores, supply chains, and customer foot traffic.

He's the Latin American Sam Walton.

His acquisitions follow a clear pattern: find the second or third biggest player in a new market, buy them at a reasonable price, plug them into Cencosud's supply chain and management system, and extract synergies. It's not glamorous.

It's not innovative. But it works.

He's done it successfully across five countries spanning very different economic and regulatory environments.

Building Costanera Center in Santiago. The 300-meter skyscraper is the tallest building in Latin America.

It's not just a vanity project. The mixed-use complex includes South America's largest shopping mall, office space, and a hotel.

The project was delayed and nearly went bankrupt during the 2008 financial crisis. Paulmann personally committed more capital to finish it.

It opened in 2012 and became a Santiago landmark. Today it generates enormous rental income and is worth more than most people predicted.

The Brazil expansion was rough. Cencosud entered Brazil in 2007 by acquiring the Bretas and GBarbosa supermarket chains for over $1 billion combined.

Brazil's economy tanked in 2014-2016, and Cencosud's Brazilian operations bled money for years. The margins were thin, competition from local giants like Carrefour Brazil and Grupo Pao de Acucar was brutal, and the currency depreciation ate into returns.

In 2020, Cencosud sold its Brazil operations for significantly less than it paid. An expensive lesson in how hard it is for outsiders to crack Brazilian retail.

Build the store, own the real estate, control the supply chain. Paulmann believes that retail is a game of scale and physical presence.

He doesn't believe in asset-light models. Cencosud owns a huge portion of its store real estate rather than leasing it.

He thinks the land under the store is often worth more than the business inside it over the long run. That real estate strategy has been a quiet wealth multiplier for decades.

Born in 1935 in Kassel, Germany. Emigrated to Chile as a child.

Married to his wife Nona. He has multiple children, several of whom work in Cencosud management.

His son Heike Paulmann has taken on increasing leadership responsibilities. The family controls Cencosud through a majority shareholding structure.

Succession planning has been a major theme in recent years as Paulmann has aged.

No formal university education. Paulmann is entirely self-taught.

He started working as a teenager and learned retail by doing it. He's part of the generation of Latin American business titans who built empires with grit and instinct rather than MBA frameworks.

He reportedly reads voraciously about retail and business strategy but never sat in a classroom for it.

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