Mergers and acquisitions carried out by Spanish frms in Latin America: a network analysis study

From CEPAL Review, by Ángeles Sánchez Díez, Pablo Galaso Reca and José Manuel García de la Cruz, © (2016) United Nations. Reproduced with the permission of the United NationsThis article analyses the changing role played by Spanish firms in foreign investment through mergers and acquisitions in Latin America in 1999-2012. Spanish enterprises that acquired local assets in Latin America and became leading players in the late 1990s have seen the situation change drastically, as new competitors have emerged to undermine Spain’s importance as an investor in the region. This study uses the social networks methodology, which enables a more complex analysis than traditional approaches, by studying the position of agents as members of a network being analysed. The use of centrality, density and centralization indicators reveals the structure of the network and how it changes through time, and thus, it shows the relative position of each investor country, Spain in particularThis article has been produced as part of the research project titled “Spanish investment in Latin America: challenges and opportunities in the context of the Latin American boom and European crisis”, directed by Ángeles Sánchez Díez and fnanced by the Centre of Latin American Studies (CEAL) of the Autonomous University of Madri