The Cencosud holding company is going through a time of relevant changes. Two years ago, suffering from health problems, he left the board Horst Paulmann, his founder; His firstborn returned to the directory, Manfred Paulmannand the second of the brothers came out, peter; Last year, the group’s general manager for the last five years, Matías Videla, resigned; and Heike Paulmannwho had replaced his father at the beginning of 2021, first temporarily and then permanently, left the presidency in December, although he remained on the board of directors.
The changes will continue in 2024. The annual ordinary shareholders meeting will be held on Friday and the board already has a practically defined composition. There are already nine candidates for the nine director positions. And Heike Paulmann, the third of the children of Horst Paulmann Kemnathe founder of the conglomerate, who just turned 89 last March.
The Paulmann family does change its direct representation. Horst Paulmann’s three oldest children – he has a fourth, a minor – have served on the board at various times. This time the eldest of all Manfred Paulmann Koepfer remains, who was away from the firm for almost a decade and returned only when his father left the board; and the second of his sons, Manfred Paulmann, returns to the table, who had stopped participating in the holding company in April 2022, when the table was reorganized after the final departure of his father.
The list of candidates that the controller will choose includes its current president, the Brazilian Julio Moura Netoand the former Minister of Finance of Sebastián Piñera, Felipe Larraín Bascuñán, who were already in the management leadership and remain. And he changes three other directors. This time, the Paulmann family proposed to integrate the table to Josefina Montenegro Araneda, lawyer and director of companies, such as Codelco, Invercap and Sky Airlines; the Colombian women Monica Jimenez Gonzalezand the Peruvian Maria Leonie Roca.
Those who will leave will be the Peruvian Lieneke Schol Calle, the Colombian Mónica Contreras Esper and the Argentine Pérez Alati, who resigned in March to allow the early renewal of the Cencosud board of directors, originally scheduled for the first quarter of 2026.
The two independent directors are the same ones that the AFP nominated last season: Ignacio Pérez Alarcón and Carlos Fernández Calatayud. The first is a Civil Industrial Engineer from the Catholic University and has been on boards such as Masisa and Edelpa and was general manager of the Deutsche, Merrill Lynch and Santander brokerages. Fernández, on the other hand, has held various positions in technology and telecommunications companies such as IBM, AT&T LA, Telmex, Coasin Global Services and Entel.
The board election will take place on Friday, but with an equal number of candidates and seats available, all will be elected.
Once the board is established, the board of directors must decide who is the president of the board. One option is for Julio Moura to continue, who has been with the company for more than a decade, but took over in December, after the resignation of Heike Paulmann. Julio Moura’s name was placed first on the list of candidates.
The other alternative is for Manfred Paulmann, the first-born, to take the helm. What is clear is that the group’s founder will not return to the board, as has been speculated in business circles in recent weeks.
In the holding’s main subsidiary, Cencosud Shopping, there are also changes. Manfred and Peter Paulmann Koepfer will remain on the board as the only direct representatives of the family and there is a great novelty: the entry of Jaime Soler, former general manager of the holding company, to the chain’s board of directors. Soler was general manager of the group from 2015 to 2018 and was replaced by Andreas Gebhardt.
Matías Videla, who resigned in October of last year after being fined by the Financial Market Commission for use of privileged information, would later take over. After a few months of vacancy, Cencosud appointed Rodrigo Larraín as general manager this year, who ran the shopping center subsidiary and previously had stints at the same retailer and at Enjoy.
The other directors proposed by the controller for the renowned Cenco Malls are Jose Raul Fernandez and the Argentine Stefan Krauseformer general manager of Jumbo for years.
The AFP will present, meanwhile, the former president of the Supermarket Association, Susana Careyand the former general manager of Grupo Saesa and former country manager of PSEG in Chile, Eduardo Novoa.
