New conquistadors
Spain was a relatively late entry in the modern world economy, thanks to the semi-isolation of the Franco years. The country didn't enter the common market until 1986. But of late, the Spanish economy has been booming, and Spanish enterprises are going multinational at a rate outpacing most other nations, according to a BusinessWeek article ("Corporate Conquistadors", 2/18/06).
Among multibillion dollar cross-border deals in the last few years have been:
- Spanish transportation service company Ferrovial bought of British airport manager BAA
- Banco Santander purchased UK Abbey Bank, and a big share in the US's Sovereign Bank, along with smaller banks in Argentina, Norway, and Poland
- Toll road operator Abertis merged with Italian rival Autostrade
- Telefonica's added Cesky Telecom and Britain's O2 to its extensive Latin American holdings. Telefonica has become the third biggest telephone company in the world.
- Metroveca, became Europe's #1 property company by buying French Gecina
- Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria bought two small US banks, Texas Regional Bancshares and State National Bancshares
- Spanish construction company FCC bought Austria's #2 construction firm, Alpine Mayreder Bau, to add to another Austrian and Czech firm it recently bought out too,
- Spanish construction company Acciona is setting up windparks in Greece, Australia, Slovenia, Italy, the US, and elsewhere. It also bought a Polish construction company,
- Ebro Puleva has acquired US and French food firms and products to become on the world's leading food companies.
All this in spite of the fact noted by the BW article that Spain is a mid-size country with no history of entrepreneurship and generally poor language skills. So why are its companies becoming "the hunters, and not the hunted?"
The article notes several reasons:
- Many companies trained for expansion in Latin America, where there were no language problems and fewer competitors
- Spain has opened up domestic markets faster than many other EU countries (notably Italy and Germany), so Spanish companies have had to learn to fend for themselves in a competitive market.
- The Spanish tax code encourages expansion out of Spain
Spain's booming economy is due to slow down in the near feature, so companies are scrambling to hedge their bets.
7:54:10 PM 
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