“Abílio: determined, ambitious, controversial” was relaunched this week. The new edition has an unprecedented afterword by journalist Cristiane Correa, who is the author of the book and specializes in business coverage and management.
He built one of the largest retailers in Brazil, the Pão de Açúcar Group (GPA), and was one of the richest men in the country, facing economic crises, family disputes, the arrival of foreign competitors and even a kidnapping.
in São Paulo. Abilio was hospitalized at Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, with pneumonia.
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The book draws a portrait of one of the most emblematic (and controversial) entrepreneurs in the country.
In this updated edition, the reader has access to an unprecedented afterword, written after the businessman’s death, in which Cristiane revisits Diniz’s legacy. The book is already on sale.
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“It was the end of the night of February 18, 2024 in Portugal, where I was spending a season, when I was awakened by the insistent touch of the phone. I attended already resenting bad news and heard the message I feared: ‘Abilio died’.
I knew almost a month ago that Abilio Diniz had been hospitalized at Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo. And that your state was not good. Even so, I was in shock. He had found him about two months earlier and saw him in great shape, especially when it takes into account that it was already 87 years old. He was still thin and strong, kept that serious voice that silenced the environment. It is true that the hearing has been compromised for some time, but a discreet device in the ears was trying to minimize the problem.
In my last view of Abilio, he was still the “Iron Man,” as described in the preface to this book, a kind of superhero that “has no superpowers presented by nature or chance, but who builds himself.”
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Catatonic, I sat in front of the notebook to write. That’s what I thought I could – or should – do. But what about a businessman who had already been the subject of endless reports? Has anyone who had interviewed more than thirty times since the early 2000s and whose trajectory I turned into a book? Would there be something different to talk about? Everything that came to my mind was far from his entrepreneurial side, known all over Brazil for generations – and that I already went out in the twenty chapters of this work. I decided
So focus on man, not the entrepreneur.
In his layers that were not under the spotlight. In their vulnerabilities. In his hunger for life and in the way he faced finitude. But before, I need to go back a little in time.
In September 2013, when I decided to write a book about Abilio and searched him, I explained to him that, like my previous work, it would be independent. In practice, this meant that we would have no bond and that it would not read the book previously-much less would have the opportunity to make any pre-approval. What I asked him was that I gave me interviews.
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It was not the format that the entrepreneur expected. Abilio was used to staying in control of almost everything, and what I proposed was the opposite of that. He asked for time to think. Days later, in a new meeting, he agreed with the project.
For over a year, I plunged into your universe.
On the eve of the publication of the work, he was anxious and concerned. He even wondered if there would be parts of the book he would not like. I said yes. He
He was clearly countered and even increased his tone in the conversation.
Even so, it kept our combined. The first edition of this book came out in July 2015 and, as I predicted, Abilio disagreed with some important points. One of the main ones was how I portrayed his dispute with Jean-Charles Naouri, his nemesis that led him out of Sugar Loaf.
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The version Abilio told everyone and himself was that he had been fooled by the French partner. For me, who had access to numerous documents and interviewed dozens of people, it was clear that he had signed a contract and sorry years later. Abilio did not call me or wrote to complain about anything, but completely distanced himself.
Although I found it in one event or another after the publication, it was only almost six years after we got closer.
At that time, among several other activities, he was the great attraction of a Leadership and Management Extension Course at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, his Alma Mater, in São Paulo. One day the course coordinator called me to ask if I could attend a class.
The idea was that I would lead a kind of chat with Abilio that would last an hour and a half. “Abilio doesn’t talk to me anymore,” I said ready. “Is he knowing this invitation?” The teacher, who was unaware of this backstage, replied that he would talk to the businessman. Days later, sent me a message warning
that Abilio had agreed.
When the day arrived, I got anxious, not knowing what the reunion would be like. I had already witnessed several facets of Abilio: from kind to the arrogant, from quiet to mercurial, from scowling to affection. Which one would I find?
As soon as he entered the room and came to give me a hug, I reassured myself. It didn’t seem to exist any resentment. But Abilio, being Abilio, did not miss the opportunity to give me a “poking”. At one point in the conversation with the students, he said, “Cris wrote in her book things that didn’t happen exactly that way, but that’s fine.” We smiled and moved on.
Other classes followed that. I took every opportunity to try to make him reveal more intimate things. On one occasion, I asked him if he would rather be CEO or chairman.
Without hesitance, he replied, “CEO. President of council does not send anything.” In another meeting, he admitted that the characteristic that he least liked himself was arrogance (the class fell into the laugh). Two years later, when I repeated the question, Abilio was silent, thoughtful. I remembered the answer I had given before.
“I’ve been very arrogant and you know it, but I think I left it behind,” he said. In one of the chats, he confessed that his dream of youth was to be a goalkeeper who defended a penalty in a game in the crowded Maracanã.
To a general surprise, he once confided that he would love to have a talent: playing drums. And that his favorite singers were Gilberto Gil (“The Superman Music is Sensational”),
Roberto Carlos (“may find a tacky, but I like it”) and Marisa Monte (“dos
younger than her, I don’t know anything ”).
However, the most touching class took place in September 2022. His son, João Paulo, had died the previous month (here it is worth mentioning that, two days after João Paulo’s death, the teachers of the course received from the coordination an email warning that, according to Abilio’s guidance, all the schedule was maintained). It was inevitable that I touched the subject.
The memory of the son, who he claimed to be his best friend, filled his eyes with tears. Upon seeing his wide -open pain in front of the students, I remembered that in the Portuguese language a child who loses his father or mother is called an orphan, but who has no word to classify the reverse situation. As if a father or mother who lost the child were something so tearing and unnatural that it could not be described in a word. For the first time, when driving an interview, I cried.
Soon after, I asked him as he dealt with the passage of time, a resource that became more and more scarce. “There’s a text that explains very well how I feel about it. Can I read?” He asked.
He drew his cell phone and read “the valuable time of mature”, whose authorship is uncertain:
I told my years and found that I will have less time to live from now on what I’ve lived so far. I have much more past than future. I feel like that boy who received a basin of cherries. The first, he sucked dyspicient, but, realizing that there are few missing the lump. I no longer have time to deal with mediocrities. I don’t want to be in meetings where inflamed egos parade. I get restless with envious trying to destroy who they admire, coveting their places, talents and luck. I no longer have time for endless conversations, to discuss useless issues about other people’s lives that are not even part of mine.
I no longer have time to manage Melinders of people who, despite the chronological age, are immature. My time has become scarce to discuss labels, I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry. Without many cherries in the basin, I want to live with human people, very human: who knows how to laugh at their stumbles, is not enchanted by triumphs, does not consider themselves elected ahead of time, does not escape their mortality, I want to walk near things and real people. The essentials make life worthwhile. And for me, just the essentials! As he read, I thought like that demonstration of vulnerability
It would be unthinkable for the abilio of the past. The years, the marriage to Geyze and the changes of life – including stumbling and losses – had softened him.
In the last class we took together, in November 2023, Abilio was still spotted, excited, curious and full of plans. He said he would take a course on artificial intelligence at Harvard the following year. He told news about his interview program at CNN Brazil. He was practically recovered from knee surgery and spent his whole class standing in front of the students (while I was desperate to sit, he was going firm).
He was a much calmer man than the one I had known more than two decades before. The Abilio of recent years seemed a much happier and more fulfilled man than the ancient almighty “king of retail.” Playing, he said that when he departed they could write on his tombstone, “I’m here, but against my will.”
At the end of 2024, I visited his tomb in a cemetery in the west of São Paulo, but of course the phrase is not registered there. Abilio hated three things in his life: onion, watch and farewell.
“Farewell is a sadness. I like it from the beginning. I like the sunrise and not the twilight,” he said in one of our classes. To play in his final farewell he chose the song “What is, what is”, by Gonzaguinha, one of his favorites, especially for the chorus “Living and not being ashamed to be happy/ singing and singing and singing the beauty of being an eternal apprentice…”. Abilio left the scene faithful to his convictions: “Being happy, learning, sharing.
This is my purpose, ”he used to say.
Maybe this is your biggest legacy. ”
*A summary version of this afterword was published in Brazil Journal on February 19, 2024.
