Iberian Croesus

He has been called "the last pirate of the Mediterranean," "a soul of the Middle Ages," and "the Rockefeller of Spain." None of these titles quite fits the fantastic career and character of Juan Alberto March y Ordinas, a stooped, eagle-beaked Spaniard who in his ninth decade is perhaps the world's most mysterious and powerful billionaire. Shrewd and ruthless, the shadowy figure of Juan March has floated across the face of Europe for more than half a century, bringing public officials low, underwriting dictators, helping to finance two world wars (on both sides), and buying himself virtual immunity from the law. With characteristic foresight, March bankrolled Dictator Francisco Franco's Spanish Civil War campaign. Today, still Franco's creditor and a powerful voice in Spanish affairs, he boasts a personal fortune that is said to match the U.S.'s entire foreign aid program to Spain -- a matter of $1 billion. "I'm so rich," Juan March once said, "that I don't even know how rich I am."

With a passionate aversion to publicity, March seldom allows his name to appear as the president or director of any of his companies, and, in the censored press of Dictator Franco, he gets away with it. Acting through intermediaries, March owns or controls Spain's tobacco and gasoline monopolies, a major bank (Banco Central), the principal brewery, chemical companies, mines, shipyards, steel plants, power and oil companies, and even a Coca-Cola bottling plant. He has a stake in the Institute Nacional de Industria, the state-owned agency for industrial development that controls and invests in private industry with state capital. Outside Spain, he controls weblike holding companies in London and New York, has a 25% interest in the Swiss international banking firm, Societe de Banque Suisse. "I have no need of banks," March has bragged. "The bankers need me."

Cut-Rate Counterfeiting. Last week Juan March was deep in refighting an old battle, and perhaps ready to give way a little. In delicate financial parleys in Paris, March and the March-manipulated Catalonian power combine--which supplies electricity to Spain's most industrialized region--were negotiating at long last to settle their 13-year battle with Belgium's giant Sofina power syndicate.*

The fight, which began in 1948, is a classic example of the way March has built his financial empire. The holding company of the Catalonian utilities had been The Barcelona Traction, Light & Power Co., Ltd., a Canadian corporation that was in turn controlled by Sofina. Eager to take over the utilities, March persuaded Franco to ban the export of their profits to Barcelona Traction's Canadian headquarters. Cut off from its sources of revenue, Barcelona Traction could not pay the interest on its outstanding bonds, most of which were held outside Spain. They tumbled in value, were quickly snapped up by March at cut-rate prices.

March then pressured Franco's courts to declare Barcelona Traction bankrupt. Since Barcelona Traction held all of the Catalonian utilities common stock in Canada, the courts ordered "duplicate" shares printed in Spain, auctioned off the counterfeit shares to the highest bidder--who was, of course, Juan March. Control of the multimillion-dollar empire thus passed to March for only $900,000. Sofina, left with a paper corporation, fought the case through the courts, spent more than $3,000,000 on legal fees. Even if Sofina wins a whopping settlement (prospect: $13 million to $16 million) March has a bargain.

Right Hand, Left Hand. Bargains, legal and otherwise, have never failed to interest Juan March. Son of a Spanish peasant who was also a small-time smuggler, he was born on the Balearic island of Majorca, had little formal schooling, was largely self-taught. With only a $300 inheritance from his father, he set himself up in the smuggling trade while still in his teens, showed such talent that he soon had a fleet of schooners smuggling tobacco into Spain from North Africa. By 1914 he was displaying the trappings of respectability: his smuggling fleet was so large that he could afford to put some of his ships in legal trade.

World War I made March the richest man in Spain. He indifferently sold food to the Allies, oil to the Germans. From his war profiteering, March went legitimate: he bought huge tracts of Majorcan real estate, invested in the Spanish sugar trust, chemicals, coal and oil. Though he held government monopolies on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, he nonetheless continued to smuggle raw tobacco to avoid paying import taxes. Once, according to legend, he imported a shipment of right-hand gloves from Czechoslovakia, later bought a shipment of matching left-hand gloves, thus neatly sidestepping government import duties on finished goods.

During the '203, March played footsie with the dictatorial regime of General Miguel Primo de Rivera. But with the downfall of Dictator Rivera, he was accused by the new leftist republican government of graft and bribery of public officials. Said March: "Either the republic finishes me, or I will finish the republic." March was jailed for 17 months, finally bought his way out of prison and escaped to Gibraltar (the warden is still on his payroll). He did not forget his threat. As the Spanish Civil War approached, he lined up solidly behind Franco against the republicans. March personally paid Germany and Italy for arms that they shipped to the Franco forces, at war's end in 1939 grandly put his entire fortune at Franco's disposal for the payment of war debts. $175,000 Party. March is used to the grand play. He now lives in caliphian splendor, has residences in Geneva and Madrid, and a lavish estate on Majorca, each staffed with a retinue of blue-liveried servants. He gave his granddaughter a $175,000 debutante party, once hoped to line up Monaco's Prince Rainier for her as a husband--but lost out to a Philadelphia contractor's daughter. His Juan March Foundation each year gives out $300,000 in prizes for Spanish achievement in literature, science, law and the arts. His first wife (she died four years ago, leaving two sons, who work for March) had a charity budget of $250,000 a year. March is also chief financial counselor to Spain's Jesuit, Dominican and Benedictine orders.

Always a realist, March today privately calls himself a monarchist, has remained on good terms with the Spanish pretender, Don Juan, in the event that a royalist regime succeeds Franco. Nor is he unprepared for the possibility of a left-wing uprising. Always moored in the port nearest to where he is staying in Spain is a heavily armed getaway vessel.

*Spanish willingness to settle its old differences with Belgium out of court may be prompted by the marriage of Belgium's King Baudouin to Spain's Dona Fabiola de Mora y Aragon last December.

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