MOVER Participações is a prominent privately-held conglomerate in Brazil focused on engineering contracting. Founded in the city of São Paulo in 1939 by three Brazilian partners, namely Sebastião Camargo, Sylvio Brand Corrêa and Mauro Marcondes Calasans, the business initially consisted in the transportation of building supplies at construction sites. Today, the company, which was formerly known as Camargo Corrêa Participações, is owned in its entirety by the Camargo sisters, namely Regina Camargo de Pires Oliveira Dias, Renata Camargo de Nascimento and Rossana Camargo de Arruda Botelho, the three of them daughters of the late Sebastião Camargo, patriarch of the business dynasty and sole owner of the conglomerate after having bought out his partners before his death in 1994. At one time, his widow Dirce Navarro de Camargo was the richest woman in Brazil, a shrewd heiress who knew how to carefully handpick her top management at the company having grown the wholly-owned conglomerate exponentially since the passing of her husband. Altogether, the Camargo sisters delegate authority with business acumen and perseverance after the passing of their mother in 2013 while remaining low key today. All told, the conglomerate spans civil, industrial and environmental engineering contracting, shipbuilding, residential real estate development and concessions. In fact, just recently last month, MOVER divested its cement making operation in a complex deal were creditors assumed entire ownership of the division and where $ 1.8 billion worth of outstanding debt was converted into equity wiping out the shareholding the conglomerate held in the cement making operation during a restructuring process. Accordingly, the division suffered enormously after expanding into Egypt, Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal and Argentina using leverage and thus incurring a heavy debt load.
Known as InterCement Participações S.A., the former cement division is a titan in its own right under a new ownership nowadays. In fact, the levered expansion the company underwent began in 2005 after buying 80% of Loma Negra Companía Industrial Argentina S.A from the late Argentine heiress Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat for just over $ 1 billion. In similar fashion, InterCement bought 33% of Cimentos de Portugal SGPS S.A., better known as Cimpor, in 2010 to thwart a hostile takeover attempt by Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional S.A., commonly shortened as CSN, a listed Brazilian flat steel maker. Then in 2017 InterCement bought the rest it didn’t already owned in Cimpor for 2.8 billion Euros, the equivalent of $ 3.3 billion. Having sold Cimpor later in 2024 to reduce the heavy debt load assumed to consummate these acquisitions, MOVER decided to unload the entire cement division in order to rid itself of unfavorable debt commitments dragging down the results of the other healthy divisions. Today, InterCement is overseen by Argentine energy mogul Marcelo Mindlin who led the restructuring process after being the single largest creditor through his listed concern in Argentina known as Pampa Energía S.A. Showing bright prospects ahead, InterCement leads the Argentine market with a market share of nearly half and is the second biggest cement maker in Brazil with a market share of close to 20%.
Another division showing bright prospects ahead but not owned in its entirety is Motiva Infraestrutura de Mobilidade S.A., the concession business. The company is the single largest operator of toll-road concessions in Latin America presently managing six highways stretching along three thousand kilometers of paved roads in Brazil. In addition, Motiva manages three metro systems on Brazilian ground and up until recently the company was managing also 17 international airports in Brazil and three international hubs including the ones of popular destinations such as Curaçao in the Caribbean, Quito in Ecuador and San José in Costa Rica. The latter was a booming operation that was sold last year to Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste S.A.B. de C.V., an important airport concession manager listed in Mexico and controlled by Mexican billionaire Fernando Chico Pardo. The price tag of the transaction amounted to $ 2.2 billion in exchange for 20 airport management contracts. Overall, Motiva trades in Brazil and is controlled by MOVER Participações S.A., Andrade Gutierrez S.A. and the Marcondes Peñido sisters, the three of them holding a 17% economic interest each for a combined 51% shareholding in total. However, voting control rests with the Marcondes Peñido sisters, namely Ana Maria Marcondes Peñido Sant’anna and Rosa Evengelina Marcondes Peñido Dalla. The former is a billionaire in her own right presently ranked by Forbes after attaining a fortune of $ 1 billion.
Furthermore, barely tainted by the “Operation Car Wash” corruption scandal that shook Brazil right before COVID-19 pandemic, the company left the whole affair unscathed having paid just a paltry amount in bribes to win engineering contracts. Nevertheless, the Camargo sisters under the advice of top management decided to rename the conglomerate anyway becoming MOVER Participações upon settling with Brazilian authorities and without its operations being impacted. On the other hand, the engineering contracting division has gained expertise building power plants throughout Latin America. Other engineering activities of incursion include civil works like bridges, tunnels, aqueducts, runways and roads as well as environmental undertakings like wastewater treatment plants and seawater desalinization. In fact, one iconic example worth mentioning is the construction of the GURI Dam in Venezuela. In fact, my own father, who is a civil engineer by training with two Master of Science degrees from Stanford University, one of them in Industrial Engineering, participated in the project himself and as a result, I even attended two years of kindergarten there growing up as a child. At the time of its completion in 1986, GURI was the single largest hydroelectric power station worldwide with a power generation capacity reaching 10 thousand megawatts. Presently, GURI supplies 70% of the country’s electricity needs. Overtaken shortly afterwards by the Itaipú Dam of Brazil and Paraguay, MOVER was the lead engineering contractor for both projects. Altogether, Itaipú is currently the third biggest hydroelectric power station globally with a power generation capacity that reaches 14 thousand megawatts while GURI is the sixth largest.
To conclude, MOVER generates over $ 10 billion a year in total consolidated sales. Even after accounting for the divesture of the cement making operation, the conglomerate is well positioned to add synergies to its portfolio of companies including the concession business and the residential real estate development subsidiary which are not owned in its entirety. The latter is known as Camargo Corrêa Desenvolvimento Imobiliário S.A. and with MOVER controlling it through a 65% ownership stake. Currently, the engineering contractor known as Camargo Corrêa Infraestrutura S.A. is the shining star of the conglomerate accounting for at least half the total consolidated sales a year the company generates. Accordingly, although MOVER has a passive ownership consisting of the Camargo sisters, the conglomerate is well run from top to bottom including business plans anticipating excellent growth prospects.