Brazilian billionaire Abilio Diniz, the second largest shareholder of Carrefour supermarkets through his family company Peninsula and one of the most important entrepreneurs in the food distribution sector in his country, died on Sunday at the age of 87, his group said.

Diniz died of respiratory failure after contracting pneumonia, his entourage said on his Instagram account. “Abilio Diniz was an adventurer with a thousand lives, a high-level athlete, a man of media and culture,” Alexandre Bobard, the chairman-CEO of Carrefour, wrote on Platform X.

This month Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $2 billion.

Diniz was a real celebrity in Brazil. He was born in São Paulo and was the eldest of six siblings. He inherited the food distribution group Pao de Açucar, founded by his father, an immigrant from Portugal. Its first store opened in 1948 and was nothing more than a simple pastry shop, named “Pao de Açucar” in honor of Pao de Açucar hill (literally “Sugar Cone”), a Rio de Janeiro tourist attraction that was one of the first things his father saw when he arrived in Brazil.

In the following years, he opened other stores. In 1959, Abilio and his father founded the first supermarket.

The Pao de Açucar distribution company was the largest in Brazil until it was sold to the French Casino group in 2012.

Abilio Diniz associated his name with many programs to improve education in the country. On Facebook, where he had 1.3 million followers, he often posted photos of his sporting exploits. He was an experienced marathon runner and triathlete while also involved in martial arts such as karate and capoeira. He was also an airline pilot in his youth.

“His vitality, his dedication to work and his faith in Brazil are great life lessons,” commented Brazil vice-president Geraldo Alcmin.

In December 1989 Diniz experienced a terrible ordeal when he was kidnapped in Sao Paulo by a group of rebels opposed to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

Since 2015 he has been a shareholder in the Carrefour group and at the end of 2022 he owned 8.83% of its shares. He has been on the board for the past eight years and co-chaired the group’s strategy committee.

The Moulin family, the owner of the Galeries Lafayette department stores and Carrefour’s main shareholder, hailed the “sincere friendship” and “shared passion for challenges” that Abilio Diniz shared with Philippe Houze, the vice-chairman of Carrefour’s board of directors.

Flavia Almeida, Peninsula’s general manager, and Eduardo Rossi, the company’s current vice-president who will take over as its chairman, will continue to represent its interests in the Carrefour group.