Brief biography

Francisco de Narváez was born September 22nd, 1953. He is married and has five children.

Looking at his life history in retrospective, Karel Steuer (his maternal grandfather) was the reason why Francisco obtained a deeply rooted and extensive knowledge in the supermarket industry, at a very young age.

His grandfather owned a supermarket chain in several countries of Eastern Europe named “Te-ta”, term that in Czech means “aunt”.

In Argentina, the company rapidly became a tradition in the retail industry. De Narváez was 17 years old when he began working in “Tía” stapling delivery notes to suppliers’ invoices. From then on, he continued growing and became, in 1989, general manager of the company.

Business track record

“My aim was to follow the family legacy, specially my grandfather’s, to manage a company. Throughout my life I’ve learnt from them the entrepreneur culture, the value of effort and the art of managing.”

His first great enterprise

Before turning thirty and, as it was said before, after performing administrative tasks, de Narváez entered the Tía S.A. Board of Directors.

Between 1989 and 1999 he worked as the General Director of the company, considered the first chain of supermarkets with a national coverage in Argentina. The restructuring process that he led became his greatest achievement in the company. It was such a successful transfer model from a “family company” to a “professional” one that at present it constitutes a study case in the Harvard Business School. “It was a long, complex, painful and aggressive process. But an extremely successful one”, he states.

At the end of 2002, his group acquired 50% of “La Rural”, the Buenos Aires Exhibition and Fair Premises, a traditional and emblematic establishment of the Argentinean agricultural livestock with 120 years of history. Today, the premises have become the greatest exhibition center of the country: the most important congresses, exhibitions and very well-known shows are performed there. “La Rural” has also turned into a platform that offers quality shows, expressing identity and tradition in our country. This is the case of “Opera Pampa”, a musical and choreographic production of Argentine history and the country’s “gaucho” tradition that was performed for the first time in mid 2004.

Participation in politics

De Narvaez in more than one occasion expressed his autocritic towards the existing indifference the leaders of this country present.

He called a meeting to participate in the debate about building an Argentina for everyone, convinced that the greatest mistake was the lack of participation of the entrepreneurial class in building a national project.

“Every entrepreneur’s search for maximizing capital is authentic but nowadays, more than ever; we have to try doing so from a citizen’s perspective. This means to offer jobs, which is the greatest contribution that an entrepreneur can do”. And he concludes: “I am convinced that we, the Argentineans, don’t have today another company that is more important than our country”.

From this conviction he decided to be actively involved with social, economic and political issues of his country and, at the beginning of 2001 he gathered more than 200 professionals from different areas to work in the creation of government plans lead by teams with management vocation.

In this way, the “Unidos del Sud” Group was born. “We want to change management culture in public functions. This is the reason why we work in detailed programs for its later implementation”, de Narvaéz describes.

Joining his political party

“I am comfortable in a party with the vocation to govern and with sociable sensitivity that is why I became a member of the Justicialist Party”.

De Narváez decided to join the Justicialist Party (PJ, for its Spanish abbreviation), well known as Peronism, and publicly expressed his commitment with the reconstruction of the PJ. “I want to work for a modern Peronism capable of assuming a management with governability, economic growth, ethics and social integration”.

His philanthropic contribution

De Narváez created in 2000 the Entrepreneurship course in the University of San Andrés, one of the most prestigious universities in Argentina, named “Karel Steuer” after his grandfather. “The aim is to revive the entrepreneurial spirit, since it is necessary to stimulate social entrepreneurs to add value through education, health and art, so that they may become motivational for change”, the entrepreneur highlights.

Since 2004, De Narváez has been a regular member of the Carolina Argentine Foundation, an institute for the promotion of cultural relationships and cooperation in the educational and scientific environment between Spain and Argentina. Among other activities, the foundation grants scholarships for the expansion of studies and the formation of postgraduates, professors, researchers, artists and professionals in Argentina.