Sociedad Comercial del Plata
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Sociedad Comercial del Plata is a diversified Argentine
holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
, with interests primarily in the energy, rail transport, real estate, and tourism sectors.


Overview

Sociedad Comercial del Plata was founded in
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
on June 7, 1927,Buenos Aires Stock Exchange: SCP
/ref> and became a holding company with varied interests, primarily
real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
.Bradynet: Sociedad Comercial del Plata
/ref> Francisco Soldati (a nephew of José Francisco Soldati, the owner of the city's largest utility, the Italian-Argentine Electric Company, and founder of the
Villa Lugano Villa Lugano is a '' barrio'' (neighbourhood) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, located in the south of the city. It has a population of approximately 114,000 people. It is delimited by Avenida Eva Perón, Avenida General Paz, Calle José Barros Pazos, A ...
ward of Buenos Aires) bought controlling interest in SCP in 1965, and expanded the company into
petroleum transport Petroleum transport is the transportation of petroleum and derivatives such as gasoline (petrol). Petroleum products are transported via rail cars, trucks, tanker vessels, and pipeline networks. The method used to move the petroleum products depen ...
; he ultimately lost his life in a November 1979 bombing carried out by the far-left Montoneros terrorist group, in one of their last attacks.''New York Times'': The Big Push Toward Privatization in Argentina
/ref> His son, Francisco, became President of SCP in 1976. SCP remained focused on its fuel and electricity, and established a realty, Del Plata Propiedades, though the group's growth was hampered by the debt and inflation crisis in the local economy during the 1980s. The younger Francisco Soldati died in a polo accident in April 1991. His younger brother, Santiago Soldati, took control of SCP at a time when Argentine President Carlos Menem and Economy Minister
Domingo Cavallo Domingo Felipe Cavallo (born July 21, 1946) is an Argentine economist and politician. Between 1991 and 1996 he was Economic Ministry of Argentina during Carlos Menem presidency. He is known for implementing the '' Convertibility plan'', which ...
were advancing an ambitious
privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
s policy. SCP became a minority shareholder in newly privatized
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
,
telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
,
natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
,
electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...
,
freight rail Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons ( International Union of Railways) haule ...
services, as well as the metro Buenos Aires
water utility The water industry provides drinking water and wastewater services (including sewage treatment) to residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy. Typically public utilities operate water supply networks. The water industry does ...
. These became
Telefé Telefe (acronym for Televisión Federal) is a television station located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The station is owned and operated by Paramount Global through Televisión Federal S.A. Telefe is also one of Argentina's six national television ...
, Telefónica de Argentina, Transportadora de Gas del Norte,
Transener Transener ( BCBATRAN is the leading Argentine company in the transmission of extra high voltage electric power. The company owns the national extra high voltage transmission network, comprising almost 8,800 kilometers (5,500 mi) of transmiss ...
, Ferroexpreso Pampeano and Aguas Argentinas, respectively, during the early 1990s. SCP also gained control of water utilities in Córdoba, La Plata, and Santa Fe.''Crítica de la Argentina'': Soldati, el lobbysta de la Barrick Gold
/ref> Soldati invested part of SCP's earnings into two tourist attractions: the Tren de la Costa railway, and the Parque de la Costa amusement park. The first was developed by securing a concession in 1993 to operate the formerly state-owned
Ferrocarril Central Argentino The Central Argentine Railway, referred to as CA below, (in Spanish: Ferrocarril Central Argentino) was one of the ''Big Four'' broad gauge, British companies that built and operated railway networks in Argentina. The company had been establish ...
route between the northern Buenos Aires suburbs of Olivos and Tigre, in disuse since 1961. Following the recovery of derelict rails and stations, and the purchase of new equipment, the 16 km (10 mi) "Coastal Train" was inaugurated in April 1995, helping revive the largely upscale area's real estate market. As the largest shareholder in Aguas Argentinas (with 20 percent), SCP profited by Soldati's decision in 1998 to sell its stake to
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
-based
Suez Suez ( ar, السويس '; ) is a seaport city (population of about 750,000 ) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same bou ...
, which paid SCP US$150 million for its shares, or three times what Soldati's company had paid in 1993. The sale of the profitable unit was partly motivated by growing debts at SCP, however, whose revenue forecast was dampened by the local effects during 1995-96 of the
Mexican peso crisis The Mexican peso crisis was a currency crisis sparked by the Mexican government's sudden devaluation of the peso against the U.S. dollar in December 1994, which became one of the first international financial crises ignited by capital flight. ...
. Its US$715 million debt was nearly double its
book value In accounting, book value is the value of an asset according to its balance sheet account balance. For assets, the value is based on the original cost of the asset less any depreciation, amortization or impairment costs made against the asset. T ...
, and in 1997, SCP divested itself of the natural gas processing concerns had under its Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC) unit for US$230 million, most of which had to be earmarked for debt retirement. Controlling CPC, the nation's second-largest construction company, Soldati shed a half ownership stake in the builder, as well as 100% of the BAN gas company, by 1998. SCP, however, defaulted on a US$25 million debt in April 1999, which effectively shut it out of the corporate bond market. The principal drain on the group's finances had reportedly been its US$400 million investment in the two, suburban Buenos Aires tourist attractions: the Tren and Parque de la Costa. Though a majority stake in the latter was sold, their ongoing losses and service costs on their startup debt continued to stymy SCP's balance sheet. Negotiations with creditors followed, but a lawsuit filed against SCP by US-based Reef Exploration in 2000 over the sale of a subsidiary to
Shell Petroleum Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...
led to Soldati's decision to file for SCP's bankruptcy in September of that year. The sale of a number of energy related interests to
Techint Techint is an Argentine conglomerate founded in Milan in 1945 by Italian industrialist Agostino Rocca and headquartered in Milan (Italy) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). As of 2019 the Techint Group is composed of six main companies in the followin ...
, the Argentine multinational registered in
Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
, could not rescue SCP from bankruptcy, and in 2004, Soldati divested it of 81% of its CGC unit, which was sold to local household chemicals maker The Value Brand. That year, SCP's bankruptcy was approved in court, which granted it an 80% discharge of a debt which had grown to US$1.2 billion, by then.''Fortuna'': La Corte Suprema revocó el concurso de acreedores de Comercial del Plata
/ref> The discharge allowed SCP to enter into a modest venture with
Millicom Millicom International Cellular SA (NASDAQ U.S.: TIGO, NASDAQ Stockholm: TIGO_SDB) is a Luxembourgish fixed line and mobile telecommunications services provider dedicated to emerging markets in Latin America operating under the Tigo brand. As of ...
, a Luxembourg-based mobile phone network provider, which resulted in Latin America's first
WiMax Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMAX ...
network. SCP's legal problems continued, however, as the bankruptcy ruling had been appealed by a commercial court prosecutor in 2006, and in October 2009, the
Argentine Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Argentina ( es, link=no, Corte Suprema de Argentina), officially known as the Supreme Court of Justice of the Argentine Nation ( es, link=no, Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación Argentina, CSJN), is the highest court of l ...
struck down the earlier ruling, citing irregularities in the shareholders' meeting convened to approve the bankruptcy. Citing his having reached retirement age, Soldati stepped down as the President of SCP on December 31, 2009, and designated Ignacio Noel as the new one.''Fortuna'': Se retiró Soldati
/ref>


References


External links

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Comercial del Plata: Where is the company with the largest number of owners in Argentina going?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sociedad Comercial del Plata Holding companies of Argentina Companies based in Buenos Aires Holding companies established in 1927 Argentine companies established in 1927 Companies listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange