Poll leaders go for a global presence
Results | Methodology and industry key
A TEAM FROM a big US bank performing an IT review on an Argentine company said their clients were astonished to discover that senior management at the company, steel pipe manufacturer Tenaris Siderca, “flew coach [class]”.
Abandoning corporate jets – even business class on scheduled services – and parochial attitudes might be a big step for some companies in Latin America. But as Tenaris has taken fourth place in Euromoney’s inaugural survey of best-managed companies in Latin America it’s clear that the market rewards companies willing to take such steps. The conventional wisdom that Latin American companies are inefficient, family run and confined to their own continent is now at best half-true; and for the most ambitious the goal is not to achieve parity in the global market but to become leaders in it.
“We deliberately sought a listing on the NYSE as well as in Argentina, Italy and Mexico,” says Tenaris’s director of investor relations, Nigel Worsnop. “In order to become market leaders we sought to apply high standards of transparency.” That implied using IFRS accounting standards.