ABSTRACT
In many parts of the world, conglomerates and economic groups have recently gone through a phase of rapid and impressive expansion and change. Global neoliberal policy trends of large-scale privatisation, deregulation and economic and financial liberalisation have had major effects on these large business entities. While allowing for more ‘play room’, financial resources and investment opportunities, these new circumstances have equally enlarged competition with other big corporate ‘players’. Large transnational corporations from industrialised countries and the usually smaller and less transnational conglomerates that originated in developing countries or transition economies are competing with and among each other to make profits from or in those regions that were previously labelled as the Second and Third Worlds.
