ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, Latin American conglomerates and economic groups have gone through a phase of rapid and impressive expansion and change. The privatisation of public enterprises together with policies of economic liberalisation and deregulation have given way to an enormous expansion of financial and industrial corporate groups. As a result, a process of economic concentration of unprecedented scale in the history of Latin American regional capitalism has taken place. Simultaneously, neoliberal policies have put an end to the development concept that supposed that industrialisation and economic groups were to have their basis within the nation-state. Parallel to sweeping liberalisation and privatisation, large private companies started denationalising and regionalising their investments (Fernández Jilberto and Hogenboom 2004).
