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

This 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 particular.