Juan Villarzú

Juan Rodolfo Villarzú Rohde (born 16 May 1944) is a Chilean politician who served as minister under Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle government.

He earned a degree in business administration (ingeniería comercial), with concentrations in management and accounting, from the University of Chile, and later obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of Chicago.

Villarzú joined the Christian Democratic Party at the age of eighteen.

Biography Villarzú was the only surviving child of the second marriage of Juan Villarzú Burgoa, a nitrate industry worker who, following the collapse of the Chilean nitrate industry, managed a sulfur mine near Visviri.

In 1967, he married María Margarita Gallo Donoso, with whom he had three children: Rodrigo, Alejandra, and Andrea.

Following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, Villarzú was appointed Director of the Budget Office in the Ministry of Finance, serving until January 1975. He resigned over disagreements with the military government on both economic and political matters.

He subsequently joined the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where he worked as an economist responsible for Mexico.

Returning to Chile in 1978, Villarzú became deputy general manager of Banco Concepción (later Corpbanca). He remained there until disagreements with the bank's shareholders led to his departure shortly before the economic crisis of the early 1980s.

During the administration of President Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), he returned as chief executive officer of Codelco. At the beginning of his tenure, he faced declining copper prices and pressure from the Ministry of Finance to increase transfers to the state while pursuing plans to double the company's value. Conditions improved during his final two years as copper prices rose, and legislation establishing a specific mining tax was enacted, a measure for which he was one of the principal advocates.

His name was considered for another term as head of Codelco following the inauguration of President Michelle Bachelet in 2006, but he was ultimately replaced by fellow Christian Democrat José Pablo Arellano and returned to the private sector.

In early 2013, Villarzú expressed interest in seeking a Senate seat representing the Antofagasta Region in that year's 2013 Chilean parliamentary election, although he ultimately did not become a candidate.