Horst Paulmann, the German-born billionaire who founded South America’s largest retailer by sales, Chile’s Cencosud SA, has died. He was 89.
He died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday in Germany, his family said. “His vision and leadership left an indelible mark on the country and on thousands of employees,” the company said in a statement.
Following his family’s move from Germany to southern Chile after World War II, Paulmann took over a restaurant in 1957 and built it into a continent-wide retail empire of supermarkets, department stores and shopping malls. He retained his thick German accent even during a lifetime of business in South America.
In what some people considered a sign of Paulmann’s personal ambitions, Cencosud developed the Gran Torre Santiago, the tallest building in South America and part of the giant Costanera Center shopping mall complex in Santiago’s swanky Providencia district. Construction was plagued by delays and problems after it began in 2006, and many floors of the skyscraper still appear empty some 19 years later.
Working well into his 80s, Paulmann managed every aspect of Cencosud’s expansion until 2021, when he turned over the company presidency to his daughter, Heike. He stepped down from the board in 2022 and became honorary chairman. His net worth was about $5.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His latter years in charge were marred by a drop in the company’s value, with some analysts saying it was too slow to embrace e-commerce and had overreached in a spending spree that included construction of the Gran Torre Santiago. Shares rebounded this year to reach their highest level since 2013.
Family Company
His oldest child, Manfred, left as vice chairman in 2010 and returned as a director in 2021. His daughter, Heike, resigned as chairwoman in 2024. Another son, Peter, is a longtime director.
A fourth child, Hans Dieter, was born in 2018 to Paulmann’s new partner, Katherine Bischof.
Paulmann was born on March 25, 1935, in Germany and arrived in Chile as a teenager.
After the death of his father in 1957, he and his older brother, Jurgen, took charge of the family’s restaurant in the southern Chilean town of Temuco, expanding into a chain of supermarkets in the following decade.
Horst parted ways with his brother in 1976, when he decided to open stores in Santiago, according to The Elephant’s Steps: The Empire of Herr Paulmann, a 2011 biography by Paulina Andrade and Marcelo Cerda. The title refers to the mascot of Cencosud’s Jumbo supermarkets — a smiling elephant.
In 1982, in a strategy that cemented his reputation as a tough, intuitive and savvy businessman, Paulmann moved to Argentina, then wracked by hyperinflation, to open supermarkets. He built his first mall in the country in 1988. He later moved back to Chile.
Public Listing
Paulmann kept Santiago-based Cencosud private until 2004, when he listed the company on Santiago’s stock exchange to fund acquisitions.
From 2002 to 2012, Cencosud completed 19 deals in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Colombia, which led revenue to increase about 19-fold. During the 2008 financial crisis, he injected more than $150 million of his own funds through a rights offering.
All that M&A activity saddled Cencosud with massive debt, putting its investment-grade rating at risk. In 2017, the company announced plans to sell non-core assets and to spin off and list a stake in its shopping malls division in Chile.
It has since returned to international expansion. In 2022, Cencosud acquired a majority stake in The Fresh Market Holdings, making its entry into the US market.
In a 2018 interview with El Mercurio, Paulmann said his bond with his company was very emotional. “Do you have kids? Would you sell one? They’re all my children,” he said.
He had a strong competitive spirit. “Amazon is coming, that’s a fact. I like to compete,” he told El Mercurio. “When Lider went to Argentina, were we scared? If Walmart opens a store and we open one right beside, we sell twice as much. You think we’ll just surrender?”
By Philip Sanders and Eduardo Thomson
