Cisneros Group History
The Cisneros Group of Companies has its origins in the 1920s in Venezuela in the entrepreneurial activities of founder Diego Cisneros. In this period of rapid industrialization, Diego Cisneros quickly turned his businesses into one of the country’s major corporate entities. This initial phase of growth culminated in the acquisition in 1960 of a television channel that would become Venezuelan national TV network Venevisión.
Gustavo Cisneros, son of Diego Cisneros and current chairman and CEO of the Cisneros Group, began his career in these media and entertainment operations. Together with his brother, Ricardo, Gustavo led the Cisneros Group through its next stages of development over the course of the late 1960s and 1970s. This era was marked by diversification in consumer products businesses and by the beginning of international expansion, in particular through television programming sales. During this period the Cisneros Group also systematically organized its efforts in the area of corporate social responsibility.
The 1980s saw the Cisneros Group develop into a true Latin American multinational through multiple business initiatives that would introduce some of the most recognized global brands into Ibero-America. With the acquisition of companies such as Spalding & Evenflo in the United States, by 1985 the Cisneros Group was the largest privately held corporate group in Latin America, comprised of some 50 companies and around 35,000 employees. The formation of Venevision International, which handles the distribution, marketing, and production of entertainment content, significantly advanced the worldwide scope of the Group’s operations.
Those successes have led to a new period of corporate development, which includes expansion in the U.S. Hispanic market and Asia, and a broadening of media operations – into music, DVDs, and digital content – so that today the Cisneros Group of Companies is one of the largest, privately held media, entertainment, telecommunications and consumer products organizations in the world. These commercial operations are complemented by the educational and cultural activities of the Fundación Cisneros, led by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and by initiatives undertaken by Gustavo Cisneros to strengthen regional democracy, free trade, and Hemispheric integration, and to promote economic development as a basis for social progress, and the use of technology as a means of social transformation.
The first decade of the new millennium has brought a variety of commercial opportunities. The Cisneros Group is producing cosmopolitan Latin entertainment, partnering in television productions throughout Latin America, expanding its interests in the U.S. Latino market, promoting Latin entertainment content in the U.S. and internationally, and investing in niche consumer markets, including brewing and baseball.