Cencosud's founder's daughter took the chair and bet the retailer on America

On 30 July 2021 Cencosud — the Chilean retail group with supermarkets, department stores and malls across five Latin American countries and more than 140,000 employees — confirmed that Heike Paulmann, daughter of founder Horst Paulmann, was the new chairwoman of the board. The appointment, unanimous on a board where she was the only woman, followed her father's prolonged medical leave. Horst, 86, stayed on as a director. The company traced its origin to a restaurant, Las Brisas, bought by the German-immigrant family in Temuco in the 1950s and turned into a supermarket chain from 1960.

Heike Paulmann was no parachuted heir: she had been building inside the group since 1993, when she created the Aventura Center family-entertainment chain, and later founded Beauty and More. In her first annual letter to shareholders she promised to keep her father's culture and his formula — 'servicio, servicio, servicio'. In April 2022, when Horst fully retired, it was she who proposed him as honorary president. By then the group had already made the boldest move of her tenure.

In May 2022, days after paying $100m for the Giga chain in São Paulo, Cencosud agreed to buy 67% of The Fresh Market from Apollo Global Management for about $676m — its entry into the United States. Santiago's market punished the news: the stock fell as much as 4.55% on the day as investors doubted the US plan amid inflation and rate-hike fears. Some analysts argued the price (an EV/Sales of 0.356x) was fair and that the deal would make the group's cash flows more resilient by reducing reliance on Chile, which still produced over 70% of EBITDA. The purchase closed in July 2022.

The expansion kept compounding. In January 2025 Cencosud agreed to buy 100% of Supermercados Mayoristas Makro S.A. and Roberto Basualdo S.A. in Argentina for $122.5m, funded from its own resources, entering the wholesale cash-and-carry format it already ran in Brazil through Giga. CEO Rodrigo Larraín noted the group had been in Argentina for more than four decades — while its Chilean rival Falabella had announced its exit from the country back in 2021. Under the daughter's chairmanship, the family company was buying precisely where its competitor had given up.

The Fresh Market deal ($676m for 67%) put Cencosud in the US; by 2025 it was paying $122.5m for Makro Argentina as rival Falabella left the country.

The succession was pre-legitimized: Heike had spent nearly 30 years creating businesses inside the group, so the board could hand her the chair unanimously even as an interim measure.

The US entry attacked the group's core weakness — dependence on a single country producing over 70% of EBITDA — instead of defending the old perimeter.

The company bought into the US at the moment of maximum fear, when rate-hike panic had pushed its own shares down; its analysts argued that was precisely when a cash-rich buyer should act.

Keeping the founder's 'service' creed while changing the geography let the family preserve its identity and its control during the biggest expansion in the group's history.

An heir who grew up inside the company can inherit a founder's legitimacy and still change the map: keep the founder's creed, move the capital to where the founder never went.

The Fresh Market closed in July 2022 with its management retained and Apollo staying on as a minority shareholder, as analysts had flagged. Cencosud kept the internationalization playbook: Giga in Brazil became the template for the cash-and-carry format, which the $122.5m Makro Argentina purchase extended to Argentina in 2025. While Falabella retreated from Argentina, the Paulmann group kept buying with its own capital — a family-controlled multinational spanning supermarkets, wholesale, home-improvement and financial services across the Americas.