Juan Manuel Ceballos (1829-1886) was a Spanish immigrant who went to Cuba where he married Juanita Sanchez Herrez.  After some time in Cuba he relocated to New York City where in 1850 he established the merchant banking firm Ceballos, Pader & Co., involved mostly in maritime transportation.  After the death of the elder Ceballos, his son also named Juan Manuel Ceballos (1859-1913), succeeded him and renamed the company J. M. Ceballos & Co. with junior partners John S. Fiske and Anderson C. Wilson. J. M. Ceballos & Co. owned the India Wharf Sugar Refinery in New York and Ceballos was a Director of the Rosario Sugar Co. of E. Atkins & Co. He was also part owner of Central Soberano and Centra Oceano in Sancti Spiritus, later owned by North American Sugar.

In 1886 Manuel Rionda returned to New York City from Cuba to work for J. M. Ceballos & Co. where he stayed until May 1896 when he joined Czarnikow, MacDougal & Co. In 1891 Juan Manuel Ceballos and Manuel Rionda joined with Juan M. Clarke, the Havana representative of Krajewski-Pesant Co., to organize Central Tiunucú Sugar Cane Manufacturing Co.  In 1897 Juan M. Ceballos and Manuel Rionda incorporated the Narcisa Sugar Co. in New York to acquire Central Narcisa. Central Narcisa was established in 1889 by Caibarién merchant Mariano Artís after acquiring the old Ingenio Belencito in Yaguajay founded around 1845.  Artís invested in state-of-the-art equipment increasing daily grinding capacity from about 500 m.t. to over 4,000 m. t. of raw sugar converting the old Ingenio into the Central Narcisa.  By 1907 the Narcisa Sugar Co. had been sold and was owned by the North American Sugar Co., founded by the Fowler Brothers, who were Cuban-born sons of a British citizen that emigrated to Cuba in the mid-19th century from Canada to build a leading merchant house in Cienfuegos.  Other investors included English and Cuban born residents of New York City, but the Fowlers were the principal owners and managed the estate. By 1925 its total annual production capacity had been increased to almost 50,000 m. t. of raw sugar.

On April, 24 1905 a subsidiary of J. M. Ceballos & Co. named the Silveira Sugar Co. incorporated in New York, comprised of Juan Manuel Ceballos who was a US Citizen resident of New York City and Cuban banker Manuel Silveira native of of Bayamo and resident of Havana, bought twenty three thousand five hundred ninety five acres in Camagüey Province from Mrs. Loreto Iñiguez Hernández. Additional land was acquired when new investors were added, among them General José Miguel Gómez, Col. Cosme de la Torriente, Lt Col. Enrique Pina Jiménez and Gabino Gómez.  That same year they started to build a sugar mill they called Central Silveira but in 1906 ran out of funds and had to declare bankruptcy. The machinery for the sugar mill was acquired from the Duncan Stewart Co. of Glasgow, Scotland who upon Silveira Sugar Co. bankruptcy, assumed title to the property in the name of the Stewart Sugar Co. of which Manuel Rionda was President. Rionda made of the Stewart Sugar Co. a successful operation until 1916 when it was acquired by Cuba Cane Sugar Corp.

J. M. Ceballos & Co. failure in October 1906 with liabilities of nearly $3 million was attributed to the embezzlement of approximately $1 million by Miguel Silveira, manager of Silveira Sugar Co. of which Ceballos was president.  Soon after the filing for bankruptcy Silveira abruptly and unexpectedly left Cuba to avoid his creditors. After the failure of J. M. Ceballos & Co., Juan Manuel continued his merchant banking and shipping business under the holding company Sollabec, Inc. Ceballos died unexpectedly of a stroke in 1913 while attending to business as usual at his office on the 3rd floor of the Lord’s Court Building at 27 William Street in NY.