Billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who defined Venezuela business, dies at 78

By Daniel Cancel

Gustavo Cisneros, an entrepreneur who brought US multinational businesses to Venezuela and oversaw a broad array of assets from media to industry, has died. He was 78.
 

His death was confirmed by the Cisneros Group, without providing additional details. 

Cisneros expanded his family business — founded by his father around the 1930s — into one of the biggest and most diversified holdings in Latin America in the late 20th century, one that included the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant and the Venevision TV network. 

He partnered with the likes of PepsiCo Inc., Burger King and Apple Inc. to sell their products locally while eventually helping to launch DIRECTV cable television across Latin America. His media deals, including educational content, spread across the region to Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean over the years. 

Cisneros introduced US brands and businesses to Venezuela at a time when the nation was booming from high oil production and prices in the 1970s. He also acquired American brands including sporting-goods retailer Spalding, baby products firm Evenflo and manufacturer All-American Bottling Corp., according to the company’s website. 

He helped launch Univision, the first Spanish-language media company in the US, and owned breweries and local baseball teams with his brother in the early years of this century.

“He was recognized both locally and internationally as a successful businessman,” the main Venezuelan business group Fedecamaras said in a statement.

Born in Caracas in 1945, he took over the Cisneros Group in 1970 along with his brother, Ricardo, serving as chairman until his death. In 2013, he handed the reins to his daughter, Adriana Cisneros, who will continue to lead the organization as chief executive officer. 

After moving his company and family out of Venezuela around the turn of the century, when he was seen as the wealthiest local businessman, he split his time in New York, Miami, Madrid and the Dominican Republic. 

His business interests in Venezuela were tested when the late Hugo Chavez rose to power. As Chavez expropriated assets and railed against media organizations, the Cisneros family navigated the volatility while paring new investments in the South American country.

“Decade by decade we would identify trends, geographies, industries that we thought were interesting and then we would do deep dives in those and then exit, move on or keep some,” Adriana, 44, said in an interview in July.

He forged close ties with the Rockefeller and Bush families in the US over the years, and had a degree from Babson College in Massachusetts. In addition to Adriana, he is survived by his wife Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, a renowned collector of Latin American art, and children Carolina and Guillermo.

The group is building a large resort on land that Gustavo acquired over years in the Dominican Republic that will be called Tropicalia. 

Cisneros said in 2011 that he was looking to do deals with China, though no major agreements followed. Under his daughter’s leadership, the group has moved away from producing soap operas and is investing in space-based broadband cellular technology and artificial intelligence-powered marketing firms in Latin America.

In the July interview, Adriana recalled how succession planning began. 

“I wrote my dad a letter and I said, ‘we went from being a really cutting edge media company to being really distracted and we’re being left behind. You should have your team fix it,’” she said. “And then he called me in and he said, ‘if you’re gonna write this paper, you have to own it.’ And that’s how that conversation began. He’s like, ‘don’t bring me problems, you have to actually bring me the solutions.’”