Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

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SPAIN AND THE UNITED STATES
Another major US player in Spain is General Electric (GE), which in 2005
opened a new Lexan resins plant in Cartagena, Murcia, the third phase of the
GE Advanced Materials, Plastics complex, at a cost of 600 million. This plant
raised GE’s total investment in Spain to more than 3 billion, making the
company a heavyweight investor in Spain. Lexan resin is an artificial
thermoplastic that combines mechanical, optical, electrical and thermal
properties of high quality. The polycarbonate is resistant, transparent and
unbreakable and provides designers with new opportunities to create
innovative economical products, such as glasses, CDs and cooking utensils.
GE expects to export more than 90% of its production. The company is
planning to build a fourth plant. GE has a dozen plants around Spain, including
wind energy, power controls and lighting.
GE’s financial services division set up a joint venture with a Spanish
savings bank in 2005. CAMGE Financiera brings together GE Consumer
Finance’s Spanish operations and Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo (CAM), a
large savings bank. GE had been looking to expand its Spanish financial
services operations, which were restricted to financing for car buyers and
mortgages sold through broker networks. CAMGE Financiera specialises in
personal loans, branded credit cards, sales financing and auto loans. It
distributes its products through CAM’s 925-branch network, based in Alicante
and spread along the Mediterranean coast.
Another landmark high-tech investment is AT&T’s plant at Tres Cantos,
Madrid – its first in Europe to build 1.75-micron custom integrated circuits.
The $200 million plant, opened in 1986, was initially a joint venture between
AT&T and Telefónica, which at that time was a state monopoly beginning to
be liberalised. The government was very eager to have this flagship plant as it
was seen as the lynchpin of its electronics programme. 6 Madrid put up an
unprecedented 60% of the investment in grants and soft loans, plus the cost of
having technicians trained in the US. In order to clinch the deal, the
government also had to take steps to reassure the United States that sensitive
“dual” technology which could be adapted for military use would not find its
way to East bloc countries. The issue was resolved by Spain’s entry into
Cocom, the NATO-based committee which supervises “dual use” re-exports.
The plant was one of three major joint ventures negotiated by Telefónica.
The other two involved Fujitsu, of Japan, which set up in Malaga, and Corning
Glass of the United States, which built a 65%-controlled optical fibre plant
near Barcelona, using Corning's latest technology.
In the food and beverages industry, Spain has its ubiquitous McDonald’s
fast-food chains, like everywhere else in Europe, but it also has producers, such
as Kellogg, Kraft, RJR Nabisco (which bought Royal Brands from Tabalacera)
6. The investment was visible evidence that Spain, as Felipe González, the then prime minister was fond
of saying, had “caught the train to the high-tech revolution.”