Corporate conquistadors

摘要

Why Spanish companies are expanding abroad. Since the return of democracy, the Spanish have rediscovered the outside world. None more so than the country's businessmen, whose exuberant expansionism has led to them being dubbed, the "new conqutstadores"—the heirs to adventurers like Hernan Cortes, who built the Spanish Empire. The purchase of the British Airport Authority (BAA) may, admittedly, not rank quite as high in the annals of history as the conquest of Mexico. But a planned bid by Ferrovial, a construction and services group, for BAA, which runs Heathrow and several other big airports (see page 79), is just the latest evidence of the emergence of Spanish firms as a global force.