At the age of 55, Richard Handley, former Latin American head of Citibank and architect of Argentina’s foremost communications and media empire, has decided to get out while he is ahead. Although he continues as a director of CEI Citicorp Holdings, the company he created, he stepped down as CEO in September “to spend more time with my wife and on the farm. I’m playing a bit more golf too”.
He has probably earned his rest, having packed more incident and controversy into his career than most bankers could dream of. Born in Buenos Aires in 1943 from Irish and Scottish stock, he is known on official documents as Heriberto Ricardo Handley. But like many Anglo-Argentines, his name has been anglicized to Richard and shortened by many of his colleagues simply to “Dick”.
His childhood contained little to suggest that a glittering career lay ahead of him. “I was a bit of a rogue,” Handley confesses. “I wasn’t a very good student, that’s how I ended up at Saint George’s I suppose.” His time as a boarder at the exclusive Saint George’s College made him many of the friends with whom he shared his career. It was also where he began a parallel career as a rugby player, achieving honours with the Pumas, Argentina’s national team, and touring South Africa in 1965 and 1971. “People ask me if I wanted power and glory,” he says. “But my most glorious moment was walking into a stadium packed with 25,000 people, wearing an Argentine jersey. That’s hard to beat.”
While not the most technically gifted player, his courage and strength made him one of the great Argentine hookers, says José Luis Imhoff, trainer of the Pumas. “He was the best in his position, without a doubt. He is not very big, but on the field he seemed gigantic.”
He has brought the same drive and determination to his business career. He entered the local office of Deloitte & Touche in 1962, starting as a messenger before promotion to junior auditor, an unexceptional start that again did little to hint at his future progress. “He was more ambitious than we thought,” says Jorge Forrester, a retired partner. “He was very intelligent, but we didn’t expect him to get to be the hot-shot he is now.”
After starting with Citibank as a teller in 1965, he moved into management in 1972. With a reputation as a live wire. Jack Morris, Citicorp spokesman in New York, agrees Handley “might have appeared an unusual sort of banker, with a much more freewheeling personality, but he still fitted in well”.
He did a couple of tours of duty in the US before returning to Buenos Aires to take up the key post as head of corporate business in 1980. Promotion to country corporate officer in 1984 made him the public face of the bank in Argentina, at a time when the country’s non-performing debt was a key political issue.
As Citibank’s representative in the debt negotiations in the early 1990s, he convinced the government to convert the bank’s almost worthless debt paper into equity in privatized companies. The deal was a milestone both for the bank and for the Argentine economy and firmly established his reputation.
The deal also cemented a close relationship with Citibank head John Reed, another Anglo-Argentine. “There was good chemistry between us,” Handley says. “We took the franchise in Argentina from below BankBoston and the rest to being number one. He backed a lot of initiatives.” One of those was the debt deal, in which Reed’s backing was crucial. “Everyone was scared stiff, but between myself and John Reed we pulled it through.”
In 1990, he joined the board of directors of Citicorp Equity Investments (CEI), the holding company for those privatization assets. His reign there, however, has often been controversial. In 1992, for instance, he sold off stakes in the holding company at favourable prices and attractive financing to friends, including Raul Moneta, another Saint George’s old boy, who later replaced him as the holding company’s chairman. But Handley is unrepentant. “People have said a lot of things, but we offered the deal to all the major groups in Argentina and everyone declined. The fact is that Raul put up the money. We raised $250 million, the same as the bank made worldwide that year. John Reed says that the deal was the bank’s saviour in 1992.”
Meanwhile, CEI began to divest many of its privatization assets. In partnership with Telefónica Internacional, Handley has focused on communications, building CEI into a multimedia empire worth over $4 billion.
But as international capital markets turned bearish, especially on ambitious emerging-market punts, CEI ran into financing difficulties. It was forced to cancel both a planned ADR issue in May 1998 and a subsequent bond issue amid jitters in emerging markets caused by worries that Russia would default.
Handley agrees that the company’s managers still “have to take it another step”, but with Citicorp reducing its stake, he opted for retirement. According to colleagues, his personality would have make it difficult for him to go back to taking orders. Still, he says, “I don’t really miss it. When there is a fire to put out they call me up”.
Instead he will take closer control of his 8,000 hectares of farmland and 3,500 head of livestock. He also has ambitions as an author. “I might write about what I have learnt – at Saint George’s, during the hyperinflation crisis and then at Citibank,” he says. “I’m playing around with the idea.” Peter Hudson
