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Julio Lobo

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19
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2022-03-16
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2022-03-16
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  1. “My creative years are over, Lobo said. A man who had once moved markets with a nod of his head, who had expected subordinates to snap to attention when he came into the office, now lived off the monthly payments that his daughter sent him.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Lobo separately owned him. His business collapsed like a house of cards. Lobo declared bankruptcy and sought chapter eleven protection. Lobo made brave promises at first. He said he would roll his sleeves, keep working, and trade his way out of losses. I will take the consequences as I always have in the forty five years of world sugar trade, he said. I'll pay everyone, he added confidently. But he was crazy, Leon remembered. There was no way he could pay. Our lawyer said Julio should be taken to see a psychiatrist. This was a man who had always kept his word with the world, and now he just didn't understand that he couldn't. And this next sentence is exactly why you and I are engaged in studying the history of entrepreneurship. It was the same ending that befell so many other famous speculators throughout history.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Was the wildest in the sugar market in four decades. Lobo's New York office would handle a fifth of all foreign sugar that entered the United States. Some of Logo's speculations had gone exceptionally well. At the start of the year, sugar price was at 2.5 cents a pound. By May, it was at 13 cents. Prices then rose another two cents in one week. Lobo had bought 100,000 tons at 11 cents per pound, a position worth $22 million. Prices began to rise again. Leon, that's the guy that I mentioned earlier that interviewed with the author when he was 91 years old living in Miami, Leon urged him to sell. He could sell, declare a fat profit, and give everyone a handsome bonus. Leon remembers telling Lobo. But Lobo, ever willing to take the risk, the big risk, wanted to let his bet ride. The market is going higher, he told Leon. Lobo could not resist the siren call of great opportunity, the possibility of doing better than merely well. With a big win Lobo could pay off.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “This is another example. He's got these several recollections throughout the book, like this. This is after his second divorce. And again, I think it's just a warning from somebody from the grave. There are times when chasing the things money can buy, one loses sight of the things which money can't buy and are usually free. And he talks about the fact that he treated women such as objects. He has love for his daughters, but he never had like a happy home, a happy relationship with any women in his life. They were essentially just further conquests on the path of his constant empire building. So I think that's interesting. He's talking about money, right? There are times when chasing the things money can buy one loses sight of the things which money can't buy and are usually free.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Made rest impossible. And so even while he's close to dying, he's compulsively working. Logo closed negotiations to buy a new mill, signing the deed from inside an oxygen tent, a telephone by his bedside kept him in touch with the daily ups and downs of the international sugar market, a made-for-houlish scene, the stricken millionaire, supposedly at death doors, a death's door, unable to desist from his schemes. And he knows, because there's all these notes he left people and letters, just one line here. There were many assholes in Cuba. Lobo wrote, I was the biggest of them all.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “History's memoirs and biographies that he collected So a few years before Castro takes power, he's trying to do a deal with Batista. Batista's really corrupt at this point. Doesn't wine working up, and Lobo has under a great deal stress, and he winds up having a heart attack, and a few months later has a stroke. He says, I was traveling on the highway of life at a breathtaking speed, and in doing so could neither heed nor appreciate the landscape. So essentially, it's too focused on work that I'm not actually enjoying it. Now I could take my blinders off and leisurely enjoy the vista. I'm glad and relieved this is my compensation. So again, all these like periods of self-reflection usually come after something tragic. Like I almost went bankrupt. I got shot. In this case, I had a heart attack and stroke. But they're temporary. And he just like, he goes back to his old ways. The life I had been living could hardly be called life looking at it retrospectively, Lobo said. I hope that my chances will be better this time and that it'll enable me to live life to the fullest. It was only a passing fancy. Even as he recruited, Lobo admitted to a growing restlessness and continued to act on it. It was as if the sugar business that ran in his veins”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And then he has all these throughout his life. He talks about money. He almost wants to give up everything. He says money that he's writing. This is before he loses everything. Money does not only does not bring happiness. Sometimes it destroys it. And I sometimes even think it is no less than the devil's invention. The only, this is 10 years before he loses everything, 13 years before he loses everything. The only way money could bring happiness, and he got so close, he knew it, he just didn't act on it, act on it. The only way money can bring happiness is as if it used, if it is used to do good and to help the less fortunate. And then it goes into this parallel between essentially he's trying to emulate Napoleon. And these traits are not bad, negative in and of itself. Like if you direct them in a positive manner, right? So it says, doubtless Lobo saw himself reflected in Napoleon's character. So he's talking about the things that he learned from Napoleon that he thinks he has as well, an infinite capacity.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “This is now the darkest period of his life. He has these several times throughout the book. He has these things where it's like something traumatic happens. He's like, oh, maybe I'll change my ways. But he can't. He's like completely obsessed with work to the detriment of everything else. He wrote that work left him with a flat taste in his mouth. It used to be a source of diversion and pleasure for me. And I was starting to feel enthusiastic again about fresh projects, but no longer. He felt like an uprooted tree, which cannot be transplanted without fear of damaging its roots. He said that he could not make plans and was unsure of what to do, and that he needed to think things through. So he's in the United States at the time, and he's thinking maybe I just stay here. He winds up going back to Cuba and building up his company again. And then there's death and destruction all around him. Lobo sought out fresh consultations after his return to Cuba. He and Maria divorced. She had long known about his affairs. Formal separation was only a matter of time, and it was easier with their two daughters grown and abroad at school. He found only more sadness than death. Less than a year later,”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “If I were you, I'd leave immediately as the people who shot you are nearby. And so they wind up whisking them away to another hospital where he can actually have protection. And he essentially wants to, he's still not recovered, obviously. He wants to make a confession before he's having a dangerous surgery, a surgery that he may not ever wake up from. And so he asks to speak to a priest. Father, I've lost a lot of blood. The wounds make it hard to concentrate and I've forgotten how to confess. I just want to say that other than killing and stealing, I have broken all other of the commandments many times, absolved me, Father. I cannot remain conscious anymore.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So the car speeds off, thinking they killed him, right? The lights of the nearest house flickered and went out inside that house was a 24-year-old doctor who was having dinner with his wife. He ran to the front door to find out what was going on, and he saw the car on his front lawn steam rising from the crumpled hood and rushed to see if there are any survivors from the crash. I am Julio Lobo, groaned the folded body inside the car. I am wounded. Call my family. Then Lobo blacked out. It was the forty third shooting that year. So again, you're not afraid something that is happening all the time. That doesn't make any sense. Five blocks away at Lobo's home, his daughter Leonor Lenor, I don't know how to pronounce her name, was brushing her hair, listening to a popular radio show when the announcer suddenly broke off the program. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you extraordinary news that Julio Lobo has been shot and killed.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “But he'll show up and he actually manages, like he'll show up and be and like walk the mills. He gets to know the people and everything else. So it says the frequency of these unannounced visits set lobo apart from the tradition of absentee owner managers. Lobo did not travel to his mills as a tourist. One of the things that I learned is that you can't manage a mill by remote control, he said. He would stop to talk with workers, many whom he knew by name and who knew him as Julio in turn. This lack of pretension was one of Lobo's most appealing features. And so that's something we've seen over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. Sam Walton, Les Schwab, Ingvar Campride, they all say get out of your office and get into your store. Be where the, stay close to the money. Be where the money is happening, where the money is made. And then again, these are just wild, crazy stories. This is a wild book. Imagine having to settle your business disputes.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Just starts collecting all these mills in Cuba. So it says to this date, he had only worked as a financial speculator, buying and trading sugar. Now he started to purchase mills. So he started this in 1943. He buys his first one, then buys two other plantations in 1944, another one in 1945 in 1946. I'm not going to tell you the names. It's irrelevant. This is happening over like a decade. And his strategy was like, I don't want to buy a single big mill. I want to have a bunch of small months. None of them was large, but together they made a massive operation. By the end of the 1950s, so this is now 17 years after he started this Lobos mills produced over half a million tons of sugar, which was 9% of the Cuban harvest. The crop they milled each year was worth more than $50 million.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “You punishing me like this? He recalled asking. I've been a good son, a good father, a good brother, although not as Lobo admitted a good husband. So he talks about he was married, he winds up getting, he gets divorced twice. He just cheats on his wife all the time. And then the second time he marries a gold digger, they're married for less than six months, and she takes a million dollars from him because they had a prenup, a million dollars that she winds up marrying a rich industrialist. They still write letters, even though they're late into their life. She winds up marrying another rich guy. He's writing her letters from a small apartment in Madrid. So that million dollars should have come in handy. I've been a hard and honest worker. And while you may have reasons to punish me, why are you punishing the rest of my family too? Then he stood up and walked out of the church and caught a train uptown when he arrived at his hotel. He had a string of messages waiting for him. The French government, Lobo Red, needed prompt delivery of 300,000 tons of refined white sugar, the same size as his position. Thanks, and so this just is random act.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Speculation lobo, he made a bet that he's 41 years old at this point, sorry. He makes a bet that sugar is going to spike because it's the beginning of World War II. And he's saying sugar is going to spike because it did so one. And it doesn't, and now he's pushed to the brink of insolvency. It soon became clear there'd be no major disruption to Europe's sugar crop that year and therefore no spike in the sugar price either. Lobo had a position that was huge. He had over 300,000 tons of sugar and he had lost a fortune. He faced losses of $4 million, which is $60 million in today's money. Lobo was in his New York office. He put the phone down and stood at the window of his office, 23 stories above Wall Street. It was late at night. Death is nothing, said Napoleon, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die early. Lobo wondered if he should just throw himself out onto the empty streets. He turned away from the window and left the office. He walked down the street and went into church. He starts having a direct conversation with God, Lord, why?”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And I think what Lobo mistook is like, yeah, I'm competitive, I'm driven. But I feel no desire to pull other people down as I do that. And in fact, it's the opposite. I try to encourage people, try to help people as much as possible because I want a lot of people that actually give a shit about me at my funeral. Or technically, I want nobody to be there because I want to outlive everybody. But you know what I mean? The day is going to come, people in your life, they're going to live longer than you are. Like you really want a funeral where that's how they described his funeral. A handful of people. A handful. Four, three, two people?”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Like a game of chess. If you get it right, Lobo used to tell me you get the other man into checkmate. That is where the fun is. Now here's another problem. So there's other notes that I just left. They're not even in the book. This book spawned so many thoughts. And really, again, I'm talking to myself when I say this stuff. This is a very cautionary tale for me. Two notes. Let me tell you these other two notes that I put on my desk that aren't even in the book, but one has to do with exactly what he's saying. He's like, oh, I like to check me another men and do all this other stuff, right? He dies. He winds up collecting way more enemies than friends during his life. And very few people, a handful of people even bother showing up to his funeral. And so as much as I don't want to emulate Julio Lobo, like to the degree that I want to avoid a lot of his sentences, the opposite direction I want to copy, you know, I've told you over and over again, one of my personal heroes, Charlie Munger, no doubt. And he says something at a”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Returned to the office to code the telexes and send them off. When Lobo arrived at the office about eight o'clock, replies from his morning cables had waited him. In that way, I gained a huge advantage over my competitors, he said, who got into their Wall Street offices at 10 a.m. At his peak, Lobo handed almost half of Cuba's sales to the United States of sugar, half of Puerto Rico's sales of sugar, Puerto Rico's sales of sugar, and almost 60% of the Philippines. Some believe the sheer size of his operation gave him a dangerous ability to rig market prices to his own benefit and to the industry's harm. Loeba's response to such talk was always to shrug. No one man can control a commodity as big as this. Lobo would respond to 600 messages a day and he would eat lunch at his desk. This is more on his love of speculation and how he viewed money making as an intellectual competition. Speculators are also by their very nature outsiders. They observe dispassionately from the sidelines, waiting for the moment to strike. Lobo viewed business as an almost intellectual exercise.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “How I want my life to end? I want my life to end by getting an allowance for my two adult daughters as an 80 year old man. So Warren says there's nothing improper about that. I know, however, I'm unable to speculate successfully and I'm skeptical of those who claim sustain success at doing so. Half of all coin flippers will win their first toss. None of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game. Lobo continued to play the game. And the fact that a given asset has appreciated in the recent past is never a reason to buy it. Now remember that sentence, the fact that a given asset has appreciated in the past is never a reason to buy it when he finally goes bust. Everybody said, sell, you can book a profit. He's saying, no, it's going higher.”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Lobo now felt impatient, even in the midst of a global depression he wanted to take on the world. His opportunity came in nineteen thirty four with a remarkable feat of market manipulation. He tried to corner the sugar market multiple times throughout his life. Lobo never commented on how he cornered the New York sugar market that December. It was he would merely say later, the only perfect squeeze that was ever pulled off. And then as he's telling the story, he goes back, the authors talk about when he's in Cuba doing research. I'm just going to pull out two things for you. I think it illustrates why this is so frustrating to me. Although a nation of naturally savvy entrepreneurs, Cubanists have been subject to a half-century experiment in socialism that has ground most of the economy into dust. So he's walking down the street, he says, someone had whispered to me from a dark havanna doorway in the early 1990s as if he were a pimp or a drug dealer. You want to buy some cabbage?”

    2022-03-16 · Founders · #237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source