2023-09-20 04:00:28
Argentina’s business elite has largely been sceptical of Javier Milei, the libertarian surprise frontrunner for October’s presidential election, who has pledged to take a “chainsaw” to the state and dollarise the economy.
But as Milei wins over swaths of ordinary voters, one corporate titan is quietly cheering him on: Eduardo Eurnekian, the 90-year-old owner of conglomerate Corporación América and Argentina’s fourth-richest person.
The businessman, who made his fortune in media and airports, was Milei’s boss from 2008 to 2021, eventually making him his company’s chief economist. The two developed a personal relationship that analysts say has been a key influence on the 52-year-old, though the anti-establishment candidate rarely discusses their ties.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Eurnekian confirmed his confidence in Milei — with a key caveat. “I think Milei would be a very good president. But I don’t want the dollar,” he said.
Many investors have been unnerved by Milei’s flagship policy of dollarising the economy to end Argentina’s chronic inflation. The country has few economic ties with the US and is running dangerously low on foreign currency reserves.
Eurnekian called dollarisation a “simplification” of Argentina’s problems.
“It seems ridiculous to me to adopt the dollar just because until now we have not been able to manage our currency,” he added. “Once you’ve stabilised the economy, why dollarise?”
Privately, other business leaders warn Milei, a former television commentator, may lack capacity to govern. He regularly erupts in anger when frustrated, lacks a nationwide party structure, and subscribes to an extreme “anarcho-capitalist” vision to devolve most of the state’s roles to the private sector.
Eurnekian disagrees with them. “Milei is fundamentally an economist, a technocrat,” he said. Aside from dollarisation, Milei’s economic plans, which include balancing the budget within months of taking office, do not amount to “anything new, when you look at it from an international perspective”, he added. “He is the one I trust to be most pro-market.”
Several of Eurnekian’s former employees are part of Milei’s top team, including his rumoured picks for interior minister and cabinet chief.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1932 to Armenian immigrants, Eurnekian got his start in his parents’ textile business and in the early 1980s began buying up Argentine news outlets. He sold his media empire before founding an airport group in 1998.
The company, Corporación América Airports, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018 and includes 53 airports. Corporación América also has energy, infrastructure, agribusiness and financial services divisions.
The Armenianas Argentine media calls him, is also known for philanthropy, including the 2004 construction of a stone cemetery on East Falkland for Argentine soldiers killed in the Falklands War. In 2020 he received an OBE for his services to Argentine-UK relations.
Like other successful entrepreneurs in Argentina, analysts said Eurnekian has been skilled at managing relations with the government of the day, including by holding on to the lucrative concession for a network of Argentina’s airports since the 1990s.
Opponents argue Milei’s link with the magnate undermines his promise to fight Argentina’s political class.
“Eurnekian is Milei’s intellectual father, and he is the archetype of the Argentine entrepreneur who lives from privileges [bestowed by] the political class,” said José Luis Espert, a lawmaker on the Argentine economic hard-right who briefly shared a political party with Milei in 2020-21.
Juan Luis González, a journalist who investigated the relationship for a biography of Milei titled Crazy, said members of Milei’s circle and Corporación América agreed that Eurnekian had encouraged his employee to enter politics following he rose to prominence in the late 2010s as a television and radio panellist railing once morest Argentina’s economic mismanagement.
Eurnekian said his support for Milei does not extend to financing his campaign.
González said Eurnekian’s role has been “more regarding social positioning and opening doors”, adding that the billionaire’s mentorship was personally important for Milei, who came from a lower middle class background and was estranged from his parents for many years. “He was the first major player who gave Milei any kind of recognition,” he said.
Eurnekian was sitting in the front row of a summit in a gilded hotel ballroom in Buenos Aires last month when Milei, the headline speaker, tried to win over the assembled executives. “I’ll focus on getting the state’s foot off your neck . . . be free!” he roared, to raised eyebrows and muffled laughter.
There are parallels between Eurnekian and Milei. Neither come from the schools and social clubs that shape much of Argentina’s elite. Neither has ever married. And both are frenetic workers known for their irascible personalities. Former colleagues say Eurnekian found Milei an entertaining presence within the company.
“He was a very good employee, very informed and skilled,” Eurnekian said. “He is a very serious person. He is very honest, and that’s important.”
However, Eurnekian disapproves of some of Milei’s behaviour as candidate for his Libertad Avanza party, including his repeated labelling of politicians from the populist Peronist government and centre-right opposition coalition as “murderers” because of the mismanagement of Argentina’s economy. “They are not murderers,” Eurnekian said.
Eurnekian, a follower of the Armenian Apostolic Church, also criticised Milei’s recent comments describing Pope Francis, a former Buenos Aires archbishop who emphasises social justice, as “evil’s representative on earth”.
“Francis is a man I fully respect and who has been struggling to bring peace to the world,” said the business leader.
Whoever wins October’s election faces a daunting task to stabilise Argentina’s economy. The government is struggling under a ballooning debt pile, the peso has lost more than half of its value once morest the dollar on parallel exchange markets this year, and a complex set of capital controls has hit exports and foreign investment.
Eurnekian said the solution lies not in “someone reinventing everything” with “drastic changes”, but in a shift towards more orthodox economic policy.
He said: “The [main thing] I want is the recovery of the currency, which will require recognising what your currency is worth on the international market — and then work, work, work.”
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