The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

Fuggers, the famous German banking and trading dynasty, owned the concession for the mines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today the mines are virtually exhausted. Santos Blanco was of enormous importance for Rich’s career, as the next chapter will show. Without him, Rich would not have been so successful at such an early stage.
    The fact that the Jewish businessman and the ultra-Catholic professor should become friends remains one of the paradoxes in Marc Rich’s life. It is certainly surprising that Rich had such a great love for fascist Spain. Francisco Franco owed his victory in the Spanish Civil War mainly to support from Nazi Germany. Although Spain remained officially neutral during World War II, it openly sympathized with Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists and permitted German submarines and war-planes to be resupplied in Spain. Franco claimed to be a friend of the Arab nations, and he neither recognized Israel nor strived for diplomatic relations. He permitted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to open an office in Madrid in 1974. Israel was not recognized by Spain until 1986.
    Even though he enjoyed very close connections to Israel, Rich was apparently not concerned about Franco’s policies. “Marc didn’t care about it,” one old friend in Spain who worked with Rich at the time told me. “He didn’t care about politics, only about business and making money. This is one of Marc’s strengths.” This type of neutrality has proved to be an advantage to Rich’s success in business, although some might label his attitude amoral.
    In the 1960s Rich was, as the Spanish friend told me, “extremely successful in Spain.” The Philipp Brothers office in Madrid at the time controlled what we would now call the emerging markets. South America, including a Cuba subject to the American embargo, was one such market. Africa, which was going through a wave of decolonization in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was another. Emerging markets in Africa included Congo, Algeria, and Nigeria, countries rich in natural resourcesthat were to play a special role in Rich’s business dealings. Even the Middle East, not yet of great significance for Philipp Brothers, was over-seen from Madrid. “The difficult regions were handled by Madrid,” one participant told me. They included many areas of conflict, new countries without established structures, and inexperienced regions lacking mercantile know-how. Above all, they were all countries with deposits of every natural resource to be found under the earth. They were also countries with an increasing awareness of the value of their natural resources.
American Hero
     
    The 1960s was one of the twentieth century’s greatest periods of expansion for commodities traders. Economies were booming in Europe, the United States, and Asia. The decade saw a rapid development of technologies that culminated in the first moon landing in 1969. There was a tremendous spirit of optimism all over the world.
    Rich knew the importance of seizing opportunity when it presented itself. He transformed Madrid into one of the most powerful offices in the company. That was not least thanks to the team of hungry young employees he had hired. “Marc didn’t care about your origins or your education,” I was told by a Spaniard who had been hired by Rich and stuck with him through thick and thin. “He was looking for people ready to work, ready to travel, ready to be loyal to the company, ready to earn money.” They traveled to up-and-coming third world countries that were on the lookout to sell commodities in exchange for much-needed hard currency. “It was a very good experience because in Spain we traded everything from alumina to zinc,” Rich tells me. “I got experience with all the commodities, and I enjoyed it.”
    By the end of the 1960s, Marc Rich had made it. From his humble origins as a child refugee from the Nazis, he had risen through the ranks of society by hard work. He became one of the most influential office managers at one of the world’s largest commodities traders. Now he wastaken seriously as a businessman by fascist ministers in Spain and Cuban revolutionaries alike.
    Only in the United States could such a career have ever been possible. Marc Rich was living the American dream. He embodied deeply held American values such as courage, persistence, risk-taking, team spirit, and, of course, hard work. The United States was proud of its successful son.