Grupo América

It is the second most important multimedia in Argentina. It is made up of 40 companies present in 17 provinces. América TV is the group's main company and the third most watched open TV channel in Argentina, while in 2018, the holding’s news channel, A24, ranked among the most popular news channels.

Outside Buenos Aires, the group also owns three channels in the Cuyo region and one in the province of Buenos Aires. The holding’s leading radio station is La Red, which covers the national agenda with a focus on sports. It has 30 associated repeaters across the country. Moreover, the group owns over 15 radio stations in the provinces of San Juan, Entre Ríos and Mendoza, and it also has newspapers in some of the country’s main cities, as well as over a dozen digital media.

Even though the corporate name Grupo América was created in 2016, its predecessor was Grupo Uno, founded in the 1990s by Daniel Vila, who up to that moment was a real estate development businessman, and José Luis Manzano, former congressman of Partido Justicialista (1983–1989) and former Minister of the Interior (1989–1992). Both from Mendoza, Vila and Manzano became inseparable partners during Menem’s first term in office, when Manzano served as an official. The ties that “Chupete” – as Manzano has been nicknamed in the political arena – had with power were key for the group’s meteoric expansion, which purchased 25 media between 1995 and 1997.

Two people played strategic roles along the group’s turning into a business conglomerate: Cuban businessman Jorge Mas Canosa and Argentinian financier Raúl Moneta. In 1997 Mas Canosa, a fierce opponent of Fidel Castro’s government who was based in Miami, invested funds from his company Mastec Inc, a leading global tech firm, to purchase 28% of Supercanal. The first cable TV operator in the interior of Argentina was purchased by Grupo Uno that year. It became the most important cable operator there, with 410,000 subscribers. In 2018 Vila and Manzano sold it to the group CVI Austral LLP.

In addition, former banker Moneta partnered with Vila to purchase the bank of Mendoza, which had been privatized with dubious tactics. In 2001 Moneta, Vila and Manzano were investigated by the Federal Public Revenue Administration (AFIP) for tax evasion and money laundering, carried out through a series of procedures used repeatedly: they deposited funds from an unknown source in offshore accounts and later used them as a collateral to get millionaire loans from Moneta’s banks. They then proceeded to make investments for more than what they declared, thus evading the revenue office.

In 2009 Vila strongly and publicly opposed the law on audiovisual service media championed by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s administration. As of 2011, Manzano rebuilt his ties with the Government, and Andes Energía, a company controlled by Vila and Manzano, partnered with State-owned oil company YPF to exploit oil fields in Mendoza and Patagonia.

The last important change within the group took place in 2017, when Claudio Belocopitt, owner of one of the most important private medicine groups in the country, became controlling shareholder (40%) by purchasing the stock owned by former congressman Francisco De Narváez.