Biography
Brazilian executive José Auriemo Neto is the chairman of JHSF Participações SA, his father’s business and a real estate company focused on the development of commercial and residential properties within Brazil. Auriemo Neto has also served as chief executive of the company, overseeing the brand’s interests in office buildings, hotels and public developments. He administered the group’s extensive shopping and retail portfolio which, along with the prominent Cidade Jardim shopping complex in São Paulo, also includes the Metrô Tucuruvi, the Bela Vista in Salvador and the Ponta Negra shopping centre in Manaus.
In 2009, Auriemo Neto oversaw the group’s first venture into retail, signing exclusive partnership agreements with Hermès, Pucci and Jimmy Choo, and opening the luxury brands first retail outlets in the JHSF-owned Cidade Jardim shopping complex. In 2012, the group also secured a partnership with Valentino, launching the first Valentino and Red Valentino stores in Brazil. Despite the challenge of the two-year decline in luxury sales in the Brazilian market in 2016 and 2017, JHSF moved back into growth territory earlier this year, with the company’s first quarter net revenue showing a 2.3 percent year-on-year growth and its gross profit up 16.1 percent year-on-year.
An alumnus of the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP) University in São Paulo, Auriemo Neto first began working for JHSF in 1993. In 1997, the budding executive founded the group’s services department by creating the parking lot management company Parkbem. Following the success of the services department, in 1998, Auriemo Neto secured the rights to develop the group’s first shopping destination, the Shopping Santa Cruz, overseeing its successful development.