Octavio Frias de Oliveira

Octavio Frias de Oliveira (August 5, 1912 in Rio de Janeiro – April 29, 2007 in São Paulo) was a Brazilian businessman who gained recognition for turning newspaper Folha de S. Paulo – acquired by himself and partner Carlos Caldeira in August 1962 – into one of the most influential Brazilian media organizations. The newspaper became the cornerstone for a conglomerate called Grupo Folha.

Eighth amongst the nine children of Luiz Torres de Oliveira and Elvira Frias de Oliveira, Octavio Frias de Oliveira was born in Copacabana (Rio de Janeiro) on August 5, 1912. The Oliveiras were a traditional family in Rio; Frias’ great-grandfather was the Baron of Itambi, an influential political figure in the Late Imperial period.

In 1918, Luiz Oliveira, by then a judge in Queluz (SP), took a leave of absence from his law career to work with entrepreneur Jorge Street. He moved his family to São Paulo, and Frias was enrolled in Colegio São Luis, an elite school. However, he lost his mother soon before his eighth birthday. Later on, when Jorge Street’s business went under, the family went through a rough financial period. Frias left school at age 14 to find employment.

Frias’ first job came in 1926, as an office boy with Companhia de Gás de São Paulo, which, like most Brazilian utilities of that age, was a British-owned corporation. After three months, he was promoted and became an accounting machine typist. In 1930, he transferred into the São Paulo State government’s revenue service, to lead a team charged with the mechanization of tax forms. To supplement his income, Frias sold radio sets after work. By 1940, he had become a director in the State Civil Administration Service, handling the Accounting and Planning areas.

Even being skeptical towards politics, Frias joined the rebel army as a volunteer during the 1932 Constitutional Revolution. He was stationed for two months in the Cunha region, upstate in the Paraíba River valley, and spent his 20th birthday in the trenches; Frias took part in firefights and saw the death of some of his comrades in arms.

Frias became an entrepreneur in the 1940s. In 1943, he was one of the founding partners of BNI (Banco Nacional Imobiliário, later Banco Nacional Interamericano), under Orozimbo Roxo Loureiro. As head of the property desk, he financed the construction of more than a dozen buildings, one of which, the Copan building, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, would become a São Paulo landmark.

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