Emperor of Sugar

The world's biggest sugar operator is a little known Havana trader named Julio Lobo. A short, imperious man of 54, Lobo has more to do than anybody else with determining the world price of sugar. He handles about half the entire Cuban crop, at least a fourth of the Puerto Rican and Philippine crops, owns or controls up to 30 Cuban sugar mills, and dominates the market everywhere. "I am the market," he says. "I buy and sell sugar any time, day or night." Last week, as Cuba's 5,000,000-ton sugar harvest rolled toward the market, Lobo operated right around the clock, closing deals with New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Rio and Manila, involving millions of dollars.

Lobo's mastery over the marketing of Cuba's No. 1 product has won him a fortune estimated at $70 million. "I back my judgment," Lobo says, "with good, fast, accurate information, courage and cash." Powerful though they are, even the big U.S. refiners find it unprofitable to buy at any time and in any quantity and thus compete with Lobo; in practice, they have to come to him for their Cuban sugar, and sometimes pay through the nose.

Born in Caracas, whence his banker-father fled to Havana after a turn-of-the-century revolution, Lobo was schooled in sugar-mill engineering at Louisiana State University. He learned sugar marketing in the hard times following World War I, when he was called home to put his father's factoring firm of Lobo y Cia back on its feet and soon earned a reputation as a top trader.

After his father's death in 1950, Lobo moved his 10,000 volumes on Napoleon, his collection of Goyas and Gainsboroughs and his two daughters into the old man's palace in staid Vedado. A fond, though divorced, father, he used to paste thought-provoking newspaper articles on his daughters' boudoir mirrors, made them eat ground-up egg shells to add calcium for brain food, and urged them to sit under a mango tree in the family patio because he has received some of his best inspiration in its shade.

So that he can spend more time with "my mistress, sugar," he has fitted out a penthouse over his office. Even when he travels, as he often does, to Europe, the U.S. and South America, Lobo deals in sugar day & night by international telephone. "This business needs me," he says. His name in Spanish means "wolf"--"lone wolf," he explains with relish. Evenings, he says, when the last of the day's 500 cables have been answered, "I like to walk alone from my office to the harbor. There I can sit on the edge of a pier, gaze at the lapping waves, and think about the future of sugar."

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