Julio Lobo Olavarría (1898-1983) was a Venezuelan born, US educated sugar tycoon often called “The King of Sugar”.  His father Heriberto Lobo (1870-1950) was a self-made banker born in Venezuela of Sephardic Jewish descent who came to Cuba in 1900 as deputy manager of the North American Trust Co. after being expelled by Venezuelan president Cipriano Castro for his refusal to open Banco de Venezuela’s vaults to finance his insurgent government.  In 1904, taking advantage of business opportunities in post war Cuba, Heriberto left his banking career and joined Spaniard from the Canary Islands Luis Suarez Galbán in the trading firm Galbán-Lobo Co. S. A.  Julio joined the firm in the Fall of 1919 right after arriving from the US with a college degree from LSU.

Galbán-Lobo Co. S. A. escaped the worst of the sugar price crisis having sold most of its sugar before the dramatic price drop from 20.5¢ per pound in May 1920 to 3.75¢ in December of that same year.  On October 1921, Julio brokered the largest sugar deal to that date valued at $6 million, putting Galbán-Lobo Co. S. A. on the same level with its main competitor Czarnikow-Rionda Co. On Wall Street, with his cousin Gustavo Lobo as manager, Julio Lobo established Olavarría & Co. to serve as his agent in the sugar trading business.  Olavarría & Co., together with offices of Galbán-Lobo Co. S. A. around the world, both worth on paper some $4 million, were the main assets Julio Lobo had outside of Cuba when forced to exile in 1960.  A small amount compared to his net worth in Cuba which was estimated at $200 million prior to the 1959 Revolution.

Julio Lobo’s strategy changed in the early 1940s from being a sugar trader to being a sugar mill owner despite a not so favorable experience with his first mill, Central Agabama in 1926.  In all, Lobo came to own sixteen sugar mills although not all of them at the same time.  He also did not own all of them outright, he often had partners but always had controlling interest.

1. Central Agabama - Built in 1920 and acquired in 1926 from a British bank. After a disastrous first grinding season due to a faulty installation of new crushers, losses of $600,000 pesos accumulated due to the disastrous first season and low sugar price of sugar in the world markets.

2. Central Pilón - Acquired in 1943 in partnership with Francisco de Pando and Delio Nuñez Mesa from C. J. Welch of Welch, Fairchild & Co., Lobo became sole owner in 1946. 

3. Central Tinguaro - Acquired in March 1944 from the Cuban Government who had seized the property from the Cuban American Sugar Co. for not reconstructing the mill after it was destroyed by a fire in 1942, Lobo’s favorite sugar mill property.

4. Central San Cristobal - Acquired in 1944

5. Central Fidencia - Acquired in 1945.

6. Central Unión - Acquired in 1945.

7. Central Perseverancia - acquired in partnership with the Escagedo family in 1945 from Cuba Cane Sugar Corp. successor Cia. Azucarera Atlantica del Golfo 

8. Central Caracas[1] - Acquired in 1946 in partnership with Esteban and Felipe Caicedo and Gregorio Escagedo Garcia and Gregorio Escagedo Salmón for $1.6 million from First National Bank of Boston, Lobo's largest sugar mill​ was  was sold to his partners in 1953.

9. Central Niquero - Acquired in 1948.

10. Central La Francia - Acquired in 1950 from Elizabeth Bonimistrow in partnership with Simeón Ferro Martínez and Ignacio Carvajal.

11. Central Tánamo- Acquired in 1951

12. Central El Pilar - Acquired by Lobo in 1951 in partnership with Esteban and Felipe Caicedo and Gregorio Escagedo Garcia and Gregorio Escagedo Salmón from the estate of Gral. Rafael Montalvo, uncle of Lobo's first wife Maria Esperanza Montalvo. El Pilar had been sold by Pedro Laborde in June 1920 to a group consisting of Gen. Mario Garcia Menocal, Ernesto Longa, Carlos de Zaldo, Manuel Aspuru, Rene Morales, Eugenio Sanchez Agramonte, Dionisio Velasco, Eugenio Silva, Hannibal J Mesa, Juan J. Baró, José Martí, Jose Maria Lasa and Eduardo Montalvo for $6,500,000. It was acquired by Lobo outright in 1953. 

13. Central Araujo - acquired in January 1954 from Carlos R. Hernandez-Garcia Diaz who had acquired it in 1949 from the Guedes family after leasing and operating it since 1941.  

14. Central Hershey - acquired on December 31, 1957 from Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co.

15. Central San Antonio - acquired on December 31, 1957 from Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co.

16. Central Rosario - acquired on December 31, 1957 from Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co.

On August 6, 1946 Julio Lobo was approaching his residence in the Miramar sector of Havana after closing on the purchase of the Caracas sugar mill, when for unknown reasons his car was attacked with a machine gun.  The Wednesday August 7, 1946 edition of the New York Times reported, "Julio Lobo, member of a large importing and exporting firm here, was shot and gravely wounded tonight in Miramar suburb by persons who fired on his automobile.  His chauffeur was not injured.  Señor Lobo was not connected with politics."  Bullets were removed from his legs and chest but one remained at the base of his brain.  He would walk with a slight limp as a result of the injuries. 

On December 9, 1952 Lobo ventured out of the sugar business and organized Banco Financiero, a commercial bank of which he had 53% ownership.  Initially, loans in the sugar industry amounted to 77% of its total portfolio, however this later diminished to 45%.  Some of the other shareholders of Banco Financiero included Amadeo Barletta, majority owner of El Mundo newspaper and of the General Motors and Cadillac dealerships in Havana.  Barletta had moved to Cuba from the Dominican Republic after being accused of involvement in an attempt to kill dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in 1935. 

In the 1950s tourism was one of Cuba’s fastest growing industry and Lobo could not but get involved.  Banco Financiero financed the Riviera and the Capri hotels, owned by renowned mobsters Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Jr.  The bank was never associated with mafia money although Barletta was suspected but never proven to have mafia links.

In February 1956 Lobo attempted an unsuccessful hostile takeover of Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co. who in 1946 had acquired the Cuban assets of the Hershey Corporation including its three sugar mills: Hershey, San Antonio and Rosario.  The transaction also included Hershey's railroad interests and about 45,000 acres of land.  Almost two years later, on December 31, 1957, Lobo closed the deal under a Panamanian company named Chiriqui Sugar Mills Corp.  Funds for the  $24.5 million Hershey purchase were $15 million cash and $9.5 million in a loan from City Bank he personally guaranteed.  This acquisition as stated in his own words, proved to be Lobo’s Waterloo. 

A few months after after Fulgencio Batista left Cuba on January 1, 1959 and Fidel Castro assumed control of the government, on October 11, 1960, Lobo was summoned to the Central Bank of Cuba for a meeting with its recently appointed president Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The purpose of the meeting was to let Lobo know the new government was communist and Lobo, as a capitalist could not remain doing business as he had in the past, he could either stay and be part of the revolution or leave. Guevara offered Lobo the job as General Manager of the Cuban Sugar Industry, a new governmental agency. Lobo would lose all his properties but could keep an income from Central Tinguaro of some $2,000 a month. The next day when Lobo went to his office, it was roped off and secured by guards. That afternoon Lobo was on a plane to New York via Mexico leaving behind all his material possessions. In exile in New York and unable to pay the Citi Bank loan remaining balance of $6.75 million, he filed for personal Bankruptcy on July 23, 1964 and in 1965 left for Spain to avoid creditors.  ​Some of his assets in the US including his seat in the New York Sugar Exchange were ironically enough acquired by Czarnikow-Rionda Co.  On July 23, 1965 Galban Lobo Company, Ltd. and Olavarria & Co. sought bankruptcy protection under Chapter XI in the US Bankruptcy Court in NY.  On November 1966, with assets of less than $4 million and unable to overcome debts of $43 million including taxes taxes owed to the US Government of approximately $25 million, the Bankruptcy Court adjudged both companies bankrupt signaling the end of the reorganization plan and the companies themselves.

The pictures below taken in early 2019 are the facade of the Galban-Lobo office building in Old Havana, the plaque next to the front door with a short biography of Lobo that states that at the time of the Revolution, Lobo was owner of the principal and greatest capital in Cuba. Also pictured are the main entrance to the Banco Central de Cuba and of the corner of 5th Avenue and 12th St in Miramar.

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[1] Central Caracas was built by Venezuela immigrant Tomás Terry Adan (1808-1886) who emigrated to Cuba in 1830 and established a very successful career in part dealing in the slave trade.  He would make agricultural loans, one of which was to Manuel Rodríguez del Rey, owner of Ingenio La Sabina.  In 1861 he foreclosed in collection of this debt and began building a new sugar mill he called Caracas in honor to his birthplace.  That same year he also foreclosed on a loan made to Joaquín Mora Rodríguez del Rey owner of Ingenio Sacramento Mora which machinery he incorporated to Caracas in 1862.  Ca. 1862 he also foreclosed on and became owner of Ingenio San Lino previously owned by José Ferrer Sirés.  In March 1920 Central Caracas was acquired by the Atkins interests for $3,000,000 from the American-Cuban Estates Corp.