The Bulgheroni Family Fortune
The story of one of the wealthiest families in Argentina
Welcome Avatar! The Bulgheronis are one of the richest families in Argentina with an estimated fortune of over $5 billion USD, ranking just behind Mercadolibre founder Marcos Galperin. They are considered as Argentina’s private oil sheiks and the biggest local YPF competitor, operating more than 600 service stations in the country and over 4,400 active wells.
So far we have touched on the stories of Mercadolibre, Amalia Fortabat, aka La Dama del Cemento and Aristotle Onassis in the series of success stories of Argentine fortunes. Most of Argentina’s success stories are publicly listed, but the Bulgheronis have decided to keep their companies in the family, in true Italian fashion.
Autist note — you can read about these other stories here:
For the Bulgheronis, it all started in a small town on the Argentine countryside called Rufino, where the Italian immigrant parents of Alejandro Ángel Bulgheroni decided to land after making the leap from Genoa to Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century.
As his first business, Alejandro Ángel opened up a convenience store, a crucial business in those years, especially en el medio de la nada. The store combined groceries, clothing, hardware and light machinery, and became the go-to place for agricultural producers in the region.
Ángel was 22 years old when he came to Buenos Aires, where he rented an office. He would read the official bulletin daily, and noticed that there were many tenders from YPF, and on a specific day he found one that caught his attention: YPF was looking for a company to make flanges.
A flange joins two components of a piping system and allows disassembly without destructive operations thanks to a circle of holes through which connecting bolts are mounted. An essential component, among other things, for the oil business.
Alejandro Ángel began manufacturing flanges under the company Bridas, winning the YPF bids, eventually becoming a major supplier to oil companies, particularly YPF. This company still serves as the main holding company of the family tree of other private enterprises that spun off from it.
As is often the case in success stories, this is not exactly a business that would come to mind if you would plan to make a fortune, but that’s what makes it so interesting. Thanks to their eventual monopoly in flanges, the Bulgheronis were able to insert themselves into all the other key sectors of the Argentine oil industry.
Below we will go over the company pivot to oil production, the change in company structure after Alejandro Ángel’s two sons, Carlos and Alejandro, took over in the 1970s, and potential ways to invest.