Managing US subsidiaries from non-traditional foreign direct investors

This chapter analyses the strategies followed by two Spanish multinational steel firms operating in the United States. These companies are Acerinox and Tubacex, which are respectively the fifth world producer of stainless steel and the second world producer of non-welded stainless-steel tubing. The experience of these firms is interesting because Spain has not been a large investor in the US. During the period 1993–2000 the proportion of Spanish foreign direct investment (FDI) in the US was only about 4 per cent of the total. ¹ However, out of a sample of 174 Spanish multinationals, 25 per cent had at least one subsidiary in the US (Durán and Úbeda 2001).