ADVERTISEMENT

Elisio Soares dos Santos, Portuguese Retail Mogul, Dies at 84

Elisio Soares dos Santos, Portuguese Retail Mogul, Dies at 84

(Bloomberg) -- Elisio Alexandre Soares dos Santos, who oversaw retailer Jeronimo Martins SGPS SA’s international expansion and was ranked as one of Portugal’s richest men, has died. He was 84.

Soares dos Santos died in Lisbon late on Friday after a long battle with cancer, said Sara Miranda, a spokeswoman for the family. “I don’t know how my day will be tomorrow,” he said, discussing his mortality in a television interview published on Feb. 25 by Portuguese news website Observador.

Soares dos Santos led Jeronimo Martins from 1968 to 2013, transforming what began as a tiny store in Lisbon selling corn and wine in 1792 into the biggest supermarket chain operator in Portugal and Poland. He handed the reins to his son Pedro in 2013 -- the same year the company expanded to Colombia -- to focus on a family-owned foundation.

During his tenure, the company’s growth was fueled by rising sales at Pingo Doce in Portugal and the Biedronka chain of discount stores in Poland. Soares dos Santos’s personal wealth also soared.

In 2018, he and his family were ranked as Portugal’s second-richest, with an estimated net worth of about 3.4 billion euros ($3.8 billion), according to Portuguese business magazine Exame. His family remains the company’s largest shareholders, with 56% of the stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Miserable Son

“My life was Jeronimo Martins,” Soares dos Santos said in an interview with the weekly publication Expresso in 2018. “My son Pedro is miserable. Either he’s in Colombia, Poland or on the way to some other place. I’m too old for that.”

A failed attempt to expand to Brazil and the U.K. in the late 1990s resulted in too much debt and almost led to Soares dos Santos’s resignation. After the company’s board rejected his request to step down, he decided to focus on his businesses in Poland and Portugal.

“Brazil was a monumental failure, a flop,” said Soares dos Santos. “It made us understand that having success in one country didn’t mean we would have success in another nation.”

Chastened by the experience, he imposed limits on borrowing at Jeronimo Martins even as the company expanded to Colombia. Soares dos Santos repeatedly said his family will never give up control of the Lisbon-based company as it seeks to expand to other markets in coming years.

“My family won’t sell,” Soares dos Santos, who dedicated himself to his family and philanthropy during his final years, said at a press conference in 2017.

Soares dos Santos was born on Sept. 23, 1934, in Oporto, northern Portugal. He dropped out of law school in Lisbon to join Unilever NV as an intern in 1955, working his way up the ranks with stints in Germany and Ireland, and later as marketing director in Brazil. The death of his father in 1968 prompted Soares dos Santos to return to Portugal to replace him at the helm of the company.

Soares dos Santos was married to Maria Teresa Canas Mendes da Silveira e Castro, whom he met on a flight from Africa to Portugal when he was 18 years old. They had seven children.

--With assistance from Jim Silver.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henrique Almeida in Lisbon at halmeida5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jerrold Colten at jcolten@bloomberg.net, ;Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, David Henry, Joao Lima

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.