Octávio Frias
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.
In 1930, he transferred into the São Paulo State government's revenue service, to lead a team charged with the mechanization of tax forms.
He was stationed for two months in the Cunha region, upstate in the Paraíba River valley, and spent his twentieth birthday in the trenches; Frias took part in firefights and saw the death of some of his comrades in arms.
In 1953, Frias had created his own company, Transaco (Transações Comerciais), one of the first Brazilian brokers to sell shares directly to the public.
By that period, Frias, then a widower, got married for the second time, to Dagmar de Arruda Camargo, who had a daughter, Maria Helena, from a previous marriage.
In 1961, he joined entrepreneur Carlos Caldeira Filho to build the first interstate bus terminal in São Paulo, the first of its kind in Brazil.
In 1995, one year after reaching the one-million copies mark for its Sunday edition, Folha put into operation the Centro Tecnológico Gráfico-Folha, a state of the art printing plant valued at US$120 million.
The institute and Folha partnered to create the Octavio Frias de Oliveira Award, to honor and support Brazilian efforts to prevent and fight cancer, and disseminate knowledge about the disease.
