Florentino Pérez

Florentino Pérez (2016)

Florentino Pérez Rodríguez (born March 8, 1947 in Madrid ) is a Spanish entrepreneur , football official and former politician . He is u. a. Shareholder in the construction company ACS . Internationally, he became known between 2000 and 2006 and again since 2009 as the president of the Real Madrid football club .

biography

Pérez is an engineer at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and holds lectures as a professor in basic physical and technical knowledge.

During the Franco era , between 1973 and 1976, he was General Director of the Spanish Association for Roads. In 1976 he went to the City of Madrid's Environment and Construction Administration.

In 1979 he joined the centrist Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD, Union of the Democratic Center) of the then Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez , where he was temporarily elected as a member of the City Council of Madrid, and later as General Director of Transport Infrastructure of the National Ministry of Transport, Tourism and communication to act. In 1981 he was appointed Vice President of the Institute for Reforms and Agricultural Development of the National Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. After the defeat of the UCD in the parliamentary elections in 1982, he gave up this position. After the dissolution of the UCD, he joined the moderately conservative Partido Reformista Democrático (PRD), whose general secretary he became and was a candidate for the 1986 parliamentary elections.

Role as an entrepreneur

In 1983, Pérez was appointed Vice President of the Padrós SA construction company . For the price of a symbolic peseta , he bought the bankrupt construction company, which he made the cornerstone of his building empire. In 1991, he joined the Board of Directors of Société Auxiliaire d'Entreprises (SAE), a French construction company that was part of the OCISA group of construction companies. The following year he was appointed President and Board Member of OCISA. Pérez is one of the most important shareholders of OCISA, but also president of Edificios Balcón and Sociedad Española de Montajes Industriales y de Construcciones Padrós , which is also part of OCISA. In 1993, Pérez became President of OCP Construcciones SA and Sociedad Española de Montajes Industriales de Electricidad Cobra SA .

In 1997 he became director of the construction company Actividades de Construcciones y Servicios (Grupo ACS) , which was created from the merger of the two construction groups OCP and Ginés y Navarro . ACS is active in around 50 countries around the world with around 120,000 employees. As President of ACS, he was honored with the annual Best Entrepreneur Award for his professional transformation from Actualidad Económica magazine . The long-lasting, strong construction boom in Spain, in which 860,000 apartments were built in Spain in 2006 alone as in France , Great Britain and Germany put together in the same period , supported his success with the market leader among Spanish construction companies. ACS is also involved in real estate , telecommunications and toll roads ; ACS has meanwhile become the main shareholder in the second and third placed Spanish energy groups Iberdrola and Unión Fenosa (now sold to Gas Natural ). At the beginning of 2007, ACS bought 25% of the largest German construction company, Hochtief, for 1.3 billion euros .

With an estimated personal fortune of 1.9 billion euros Pérez was first in 2007 at number 538 of the list of the richest people in the world of Forbes Magazine's out. The prestigious business magazine Harvard Business Review selected him in 2010 as 37th in the list of the 50 most successful CEOs in the world.

Role in football

When he ran for the presidency of Real Madrid for the first time, Pérez lost to Ramón Mendoza in February 1995 with around 700 votes.

In July 2000 he ran again in the presidential elections of Real Madrid, in which he won with 16,469 votes against 13,302 votes for his opponent Lorenzo Sanz , who had hoped to be re-elected because of the successful European competitions in 1998 and 2000. However, Pérez concentrated his criticism of the previous board, as in 1995, on the mismanagement of the club. In 2004 Pérez was re-elected with 94.2%. During his presidency, the highly indebted football club was renovated economically. In May 2001, the training ground in downtown Madrid was sold for 480 million euros to the companies OHL , Repsol , Mutua Madrileña and Sacyr Vallehermoso , who built the high-rise complex Cuatro Torres Business Area there.

Stars like Zinédine Zidane , Luís Figo , David Beckham , Michael Owen , Ronaldo and Robinho were signed during what was initially known as the "Galactic Era", in which Pérez announced that it would sign another international star every season. Real Madrid became Spanish champions in the Primera División in 2001 and 2003, and in 2002 they won the Champions League and the World Cup . Pérez had Real Madrid's new Ciudad Deportiva built, the most modern training center in the world, and implemented a number of improvements to the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu , which he had completely modernized.

His most controversial decisions included the rejection of extra time for coach Vicente del Bosque and captain Fernando Hierro , immediately after winning the 2003 Spanish championship. In the judgment of some football connoisseurs, however, the dispute between Pérez and defensive midfielder Claude Makélélé was decisive: When Makélélé asked for a contract improvement with the support of Zidane, Raúl , Steve McManaman and Fernando Morientes , Pérez let him accrue and ultimately put him on the transfer list, sold transferred him to Chelsea and later drew on his performance. With Makélélé, however, the balance between offensive and defensive at Real Madrid was lost. Pérez, however, continued to look for offensive forces.

On February 27, 2006, he resigned as President of Real Madrid due to poor sporting development. His resignation came unexpectedly and surprisingly, although understandable because of the severe crisis into which the club slipped after three years without sporting success, which had not happened in fifty years. A year after his resignation, his father Don Eduardo Pérez died at the age of 90.

In August 2009, fans thanked him with a banner for the prompt implementation of the star commitments he had announced.

Since June 1, 2009 he has been President of Real Madrid again , after all other candidates could not raise the required equity of 57 million euros. Thus he came to his third term. Already within the first two months in office, Pérez signed stars like Cristiano Ronaldo , Kaká , Karim Benzema , Raúl Albiol and Xabi Alonso . On June 2, 2013, Pérez was entrusted with a fourth term as President.

literature

• Florentino Pérez Rodriguez , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/2010 of December 7, 2010, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from March 22, 2007: With a peseta on the empire by Ralph Schulz
3. ^ The Best-Performing CEOs in the World. In: Harvard Business Review . Retrieved January 7, 2010 .