The masters of the great Spanish capital are foreigners
The American investment funds, and especially the giant Blackrock, went to the desperate appeal that Minister Luis de Guindos made in the main financial capitals and especially in London and New York
EFE
The shareholding control packages of 19 of the 35 companies that make up the IBEX are in foreign hands, almost all North American and in particular the Blackrock fund, the new great oligarch of Spanish capital.
Although it came from before, the massive landing has occurred in recent years, in the Rajoy era. And it is disturbing. Because those funds do not have any industrial or productive vocation.
The day your investment stops being profitable, they will leave.
Meanwhile, the threat that they can do it makes the positions they have reached in the largest companies in our country decisive.
A book ( Ibex 35, a heretical history of power in Spain ) describes in detail and precisely the process that has led to this extraordinary fact and that in the EU only has as a parallel the colonized Ireland and one of the countries of the East, in the However, it does not reach Spanish levels.
The author of the text, Rubén Juste , goes back to the stage of socialist governments to begin the story of how the landscape of Spanish economic power has changed over the past 30 years.
The protagonism of the "beautiful people" protected by the governments of Felipe González in the 80s and 90s of the last century and particularly by its economy minister Carlos Solchaga was the first milestone of the replacement by new actors of the oligarchy of the 7 major banks that in the Franco regime dominated the big companies.
Beginning in 1996, José María Aznar significantly changed that situation and created a business power group directly linked to himself and whose main leaders owed him their positions.
The way to achieve this was the privatization of the large companies that until then were owned by the State - Telefónica, Endesa, Argentaria, Repsol, Tabacalera and others - and the appointment as presidents of the same ones of loyal to Aznar.
The rise of Miguel Blesa to the presidency of CajaMadrid, which would be the main financial instrument of the president's plans, was an essential complement to the operation.
In his second government -2000-2004- Aznar went a step further.
With its new land law and its plans for state investment in infrastructures, it raised the big construction companies to the corporate Olympus, which became some of the largest in the world. The irrational assumption of risks in the brick by the savings banks, promoted by the government, gave financial support to these initiatives.
The great corruption, widespread, was born from that period between the political power and the new bosses , not a few of them political until something before: the presence of former senior officials of the administration in the IBEX councils did not stop growing, although there was already started in the Solchagastage .
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did nothing significant to change that situation.
The powerful of the Aznar era continued to have the same power.
The only relevant thing that the socialist president did was to elevate Emilio Botín and his almighty bank, Santander, to the condition of unqualified ally.
"You have my support and that of my government and, you know, that of the entire population," he told her one day. The relationship of forces within the framework of the big company did not change, and Aznar's friends kept sending. And Aznar's policies were not changed either, particularly those related to brick.
Rajoy arrived at the government in the heat of crisis and this one became acute soon after his arrival. The dramatic situation of the financial sector forced him to load the savings banks - that was one of the conditions imposed by Brussels in exchange for the bank rescue - and only that produced important changes in the structure of corporate power.But it did something else: not put any impediment, even encourage openly, to foreign capital finance in the large Spanish companies the space that many of its major shareholders wanted to leave because they preferred money in hand to keep taking risks. So are not a few of our capitalists.
The American investment funds, and especially the giant Blackrock , went to the desperate appeal that Minister Luis de Guindos made in the main financial capitals and especially inLondon and New York, which he knew well from his time as director of Lehman Brothers .
Felipe González also contributed by encouraging Carlos Slim to take over the FCC emporium and Aqualia, the largest water distributor in Spain. And it is said that now the Mexican magnate has his eyes on Repsol.
As a result of these movements, in a few years and at a good price, foreign funds have taken control or reference holdings in 19 of the 35 IBEX companies , not to mention thepractically total control that foreign multinationals exercise in the first companies in our industrial sector and the growing dominance of North American funds in the real estate heritage inherited from savings banks or purchased directly from some municipalities, such as the one in Madrid governed by Ana Botella.
Almost always at bargain prices.
Yesterday the BBVA , whose control package is in the hands of Blackrock, by the way, sold to the USA Cerberus fund its real estate assets, no less than 70,000 properties.
The electricity companies Endesa, Enagás or Iberdrola have passed into foreign hands.
Blackrock is the largest shareholder of Banco Santander and BBVA.
5 of the 7 IBEX banks have foreign reference shares.
Blackrock is also present and almost always controls DIA, Merlin Properties, Ferrovial, Repsol, Iberdrola, Telefonica, Mediaset, Acerinox and Aena.
CEPSA belongs in its entirety to theIPIC fund of Abu Dhabi.
Practically the same CLH , which monopolizes the distribution and storage of crude oil.
Iberia is a low-cost subsidiary of British Airways.
The list is even longer.
It also includes some of the leading companies in the media sector, with Mediaset, Antena 3 and Prisa in the lead. And it could grow very soon.
The big construction companies, all of them heavily indebted, can be in the focus of those funds.
There will be those who think that it is the same that strategic interests so decisive for the Spanish economy are in foreign hands. It will be wrong. And more at a time when economic nationalism is consolidated, and not only in Trump's United States.
The doubts about the future of the Spanish subsidiaries of some industrial multinationals, including the automobile one, are examples of those problems.
That, in addition, they are aggravated if the new masters of the IBEX 35 are investment funds that can perfectly retire of Spain of a day for another without problem some.
In other words, no matter how much the government boasts of economic success, reality, without talking about social inequality and unemployment, is that our structure presents very serious weaknesses that could cost us one day.
