Latin America: The Beneficent Octopus

In a neo-Tudor office building in Buenos Aires, a clattering telex last week typed out more than 1,000 messages a day from the four corners of the world. There was news of jute prices in Calcutta, of harvest prospects in Illinois, and of grain shipments from Australia. All these reports had the same addressee: Bunge & Born Ltd., a firm so powerful that Argentines call it “El Pulpo”—the Octopus.

Scions of the Times. Little-known out side its homeland, Bunge & Born is the mightiest trading company south of the Equator and one of the biggest in the world. In Argentina, the company and its subsidiaries handle one-quarter of all wheat exports, manufacture 85% of the nation’s tin cans, operate the biggest cotton mill and paint factory, and produce a bewildering variety of other products ranging from drugs to cake mixes. And the Argentine operations are only a beginning: with branches in 80 countries, stretching from Switzerland to Japan and dealing in everything from tallow to steel, the Bunge & Born empire last year had worldwide sales of $1.5 billion.

Indirectly, Bunge & Born got its start in the lyth century, when a merchant family named Bunge (pronounced bungee) began trading in wheat along the Baltic coast. In 1876, when the first immense shipments of grain began to flow to Europe from the Pampas, young Ernest Bunge and his brother-in-law, George Born, emigrated from Antwerp to Buenos Aires and started a branch that soon overshadowed its European trunk. The company expanded even more rapidly under Ernest Bunge’s successor, German-born Alfred (“Don Alfredo”) Hirsch, who used the grain trade profits to diversify into milling and manufacturing. Since Hirsch’s death in 1956, the domain has been run by a cosmopolitan band of second-generation Argentines of German, French and Dutch ancestry. At the top of the ladder are tall, soldierly President Jorge Born, 62, son of the cofounder, and squat Vice President Mario Hirsch, 51, son of Don Alfredo.

Despite the turbulence of Argentine politics and the world grain market, Bunge & Born has prospered because it has shrewdly spread its bets into so many countries and industries. By building a reputation for strict honesty and rigid adherence to delivery dates, it has become the biggest shipper of jute in India. Biggest of all the overseas subsidiaries is New York’s Bunge Corp., which last year rang up sales of more than $500 million, including more than $125 million from storing and shipping U.S. surplus grain.

Turn Off the Limelight. Bunge & Born has remained inconspicuous partly because it has taken the position that “with little direct contact with the public, we have no need to advertise.” A deeper reason is that Bunge & Born consciously avoids the limelight because its great bulk alone makes it a target for critics. Says one executive, speaking of the U.S. subsidiary: “We’re in a funny spot. A lot of Americans don’t like the idea of a foreign company being paid by the U.S. Government to export surplus wheat.”

Back home, a lot of Peronist-minded Argentines do not like to see such a rich company in private hands. But Bunge & Born so far has fended off nationalistic politicians and wild-eyed trade unionists by pioneering with such employee fringes as company-paid medical care and nurseries for children of working mothers. Currently, Bunge & Born is holding off on further expansion at home because of Argentina’s political instability. But few Argentines believe that the company will stand still long. Admits President Born, whose prime passion outside business is a herd of prize Herefords: “I love to see things grow—and help them to grow.”