Jerónimo Julio Arango Arias (1927 — 4 April 2020) was a Mexican

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

businessman, co-founder of the Aurrerá supermarket chain, with his younger brothers, Manuel and Plácido, known for a long time as three of Mexico's wealthiest men. His net worth was estimated at US$4.6 billion in 2006 by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''.

Career

Arango founded his Aurrerá discount stores in 1958 after a trip to New York where he witnessed people standing in long lines to obtain discounts; he decided to open one that sold at discount, emphasizing cost over other niceties. The stores flourished and eventually, his family's company, Grupo CIFRA, was the largest supermarket chain in Mexico (including Aurrerá and Superama stores) as well as restaurants (VIPs and El Portón) and fashion stores (Suburbia). By 1991, Arango partnered with

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

, a move that eventually brought the Wal-Mart retail stores to Mexico. The Mexican chain was later renamed Walmex and became the starting point for Wal-Mart's expansion in Mexico. By 1997 the Arango family decided to sell majority shareholding of CIFRA to Wal-Mart in a transaction worth over $2 billion. Manuel, Jerónimo's brother is the president of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy as well for more than ten different non-profit organizations. He won two

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

s in the 1970s for the production of a well-known documentary about pre-Hispanic life. Manuel's wife, Marie-Therese Arango, is the president of the Mexican Folk Art Museum.

Personal life

Prior to his death, his residence was in Los Angeles, California. He had a vacation home in

Acapulco Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , ; ), is a city and Port of Acapulco, major seaport in the Political divisions of Mexico, state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Located on a deep, semicirc ...

which was designed by

John Lautner John Edward Lautner (July 16, 1911 – October 24, 1994) was an American architect. Following an apprenticeship in the mid-1930s with the Taliesin Fellowship led by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner opened his own practice in 1938, where he worked for ...

. This house known as the ''Marbrisa House'', is considered an icon in

space age The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the space race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events, beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, and co ...

googie Googie architecture ( ) is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the U ...

design. Arango died on 4 April 2020 due to

natural causes In many legal jurisdictions, the manner of death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinc ...

References

1927 births 2020 deaths Mexican businesspeople in retailing 21st-century Mexican businesspeople Mexican billionaires Mexican company founders {{mexico-business-bio-stub

Career

Personal life

See also

References