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ENERSIS: CHILE'S ELECTRIC POWERHOUSE PROWLS ABROAD (int'l edition)A recent TV spot for Chile's Enersis features an executive primping before a mirror. Suddenly, he falls head over heels down an elegant staircase. The unusual ad is part of a public-service series on social values. The exec's comeuppance is meant to convey the image of corporate modesty that CEO Jose Yuraszeck wishes to project for his company--Latin America's largest private electricity provider. Yuraszeck's plans are hardly modest, however. A former exec at Chile's state electricity-distribution company when it was privatized in 1982, he has already made Enersis a regional standout--a new Latin multinational. He has tripled sales in five years, to $2.7 billion in 1996, buying stakes in electricity companies in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Now, Enersis is amassing a war chest as state-owned energy holdings go on the block all over the region. Yuraszeck expects to spend at least $3 billion in a drive to win control, with partners, of 20% of the region's electricity market. ''Timing is crucial,'' says Chief Financial Officer Juan Dominguez. ''These kinds of opportunities won't come again.'' Enersis isn't the only company to see that. Yuraszeck faces deep-pocketed rivals from the U.S. and Europe as he pursues a big prize: Brazil, where $40 billion in electric assets will be sold in the next few years. So Yuraszeck and other stockholders recently agreed to sell 26% of Enersis to Spain's state electrical company, Endesa, for $1.4 billion. Enersis and Endesa will sink $1 billion into a separate company to invest in Latin America. Yuraszeck and other execs are getting a fat premium from Endesa for their shares, which carry enhanced voting power, over those of other stockholders--many of them Enersis workers. Critics say that makes Yuraszeck look more greedy than modest. But the deal leaves the CEO in charge, and Enersis' board intact, until 2000. In its push to become Latin America's top electricity supplier, Enersis is hardly stumbling.
By Lake Sagaris, with Elizabeth Love, in Santiago
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Updated Oct. 16, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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