With his usual sober and singular style, El Corte Ingles, the third group of department stores in the world and first in Europe, pretended no urgency in the sequence or give a signal about the future his brief statement. The retail giant came yesterday, like Banco Santander, a new phase of its history that will impact the Spanish economic and social life, but was limited in yesterday afternoon to report the death of its president, Isidoro Alvarez by ‘unexpected heart attack “and emphasized that he had received before he died’ the sacraments’. Not yet moved any future element.
The Spanish company founded in 1935 by Ramón Areces maintains its own sense of time, outside the voracity of stock market information -where trading has never wanted to until now and addresses one of the most important changes in top Spanish business class without haste, for example, Banco Santander, which named a new president Ana Patricia Botin in the first 24 hours after the death of his father.
High business sources betting, however, that the future of the English Court will be written by a duo Dimas Gimeno , current executive director for El Corte Ingles and former president of Endesa, Manuel Pizarro
Alvarez has died at age 79 when he was starting a renewal of the company after the hard years of the crisis, when, for the first time in recent history , has had trouble financing. 2013 was a pivotal year. The banks, especially foreign banks, said that one of the shortcomings of the English Court was excessive inertia of the past and the lack of signs of preparation for succession, despite age, Alvarez not only, but of his top aides.
Finally, the group managed to refinance a debt of 5,070 million euros maturing short-term and sold the bulk of its financial activity to Banco Santander. But Alvarez that year appointed his nephew Gimeno Dimas, 40, new director and deputy general manager of the group. Alvarez himself had been appointed to the same position in 1966, just 31 years. In 1989 he relieved Areces.
After the impact he had expected in the months before a tough negotiation with banks, Alvarez decided to incorporate last spring to El Corte Ingles former president of Endesa, Manuel Pizarro. The select board of the group was traditionally endogamous . Alvarez enjoyed and veteran executive directors of the group and close in age to yours as Florencio Lasaga or Carlos Martinez Echevarria. However, on 31 August announced that Pizarro was not only appointed assistant to the president, but a member of the board of directors. He also joined as Secretary General Antonio Hernández Gil, former president of the Bar Association of Madrid and former director of Repsol, among other charges.
The act of calling on Alvarez at the last meeting of shareholders Dimas Gimeno, confirms him as dolphin and makes him a natural candidate to succeed in the executive control. Both he and Pizarro become key to complete men the necessary renewal of the English Court, that although achieved in the last year to improve the benefits for the first time in six years, has suffered from the crisis tough competition, everyone in your area, different groups, from Mercadona Decathlon. Internationalization has remained unfinished.
Unlike in Santander, which officially controls the family Booty barely 1% of the capital, the heirs of Álvarez Areces and control most El Corte Ingles and not sighted any risk of instability, but the handling of the times that followed the death of Areces, the board formalized in a few dates succession mimics Alvarez. Lasaga, Martínez Echevarría, Juan Hermoso or manager, Juan Ignacio Lamata, were the closest collaborators of Alvarez in recent years, in addition to the late Juan Manuel de Mingo.
The deceased was admitted to emergency hospital Puerta de Hierro in Madrid on the 10th in the morning in which just died, also at age 79, Emilio Botín. According to the official version, he was suffering “respiratory failure” that was favorable to the point that Alvarez was working from the hospital using his mobile to keep in touch with colleagues. On Friday, doctors kept him in the hospital as a precaution, according to this version, but worsened during the weekend. On Sunday morning he fell “an unexpected heart attack” that first afternoon and could not overcome.
Alvarez kept the pace of work to the end. Still today was common to see him on weekends in one of its routes surprise visit by any of the department stores group to observe first hand how everything was arranged and what was the deal to customers. He himself remained interlocutor quoted government and the Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, or Secretary of State for Trade, Jaime García Legaz for any management interest to your company. He was also a member of the Business Council for Competitiveness (CEC) chaired by César Alierta, although his public and political activity was incomparably lower than, for example, also deceased Emilio Botín.
His fellow elite in the CEC was fired yesterday with this statement: “During his long career he drove with great success all aspects clothing and textile distribution and then to the structuring of the distribution sector in all areas, configured as the industry leader through the English Court and thus contributing to enhance the Brand Spain at the highest level (…) His huge personality and human qualities led him to worry about all areas of patronage, developing the Ramón Areces, one of the most important in our country “Foundation.
Alvarez maintained good relations with the two major parties. Your company is among those that make contributions to the foundations of, among others, PP and PSOE . It was Zapatero’s socialist government which awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Work. He handed the then Labor Minister Jesus Caldera, in 2007 by dedicating “a lifetime to create progress” and being “socially useful and exemplary in the discharge of their duties.”
The late president of El Corte Ingles did not give interviews or performed public interventions. His relationship with the media has focused in the area of advertising, as one of the largest advertisers in the country.
Alvarez did not believe in some of the new uses of executive high class and valued as few company loyalty . “My school has always been the English Court and my teacher, Ramón Areces’ said in its official curriculum. He dedicated his life to the group, kept the power of the brand after the death of founder and expanded and diversified.
The unions have traditionally presented to Alvarez as a President of paternalistic style and resistant to improve labor relations . He was proud to employ 93,000 people and an important “contribution to national income,” which he coded last in 3.351 million euros.
The Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, yesterday praised a telegram ‘magnificent business work “ and called it’ icon credibility and trust for so many families and consumers,” clearly referring to if not satisfied we will refund your money. How does the group react to this new cycle? “The initiatives launched, developed or completed this year, show that El Corte Ingles is a dynamic, creative, able to innovate and cope with imagination and effort to the needs of an increasingly demanding public company,” said Alvarez in his last speech.
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