The large construction companies are not going to support Ferrovial in its confrontation with the Government and prefer to distance themselves from what they consider to be a particular case, despite the fact that they share a strong international projection with the Del Pino family company, a special interest in the United States and, in almost all cases, the presence of a reference shareholder capable of promoting major strategic changes.
Among the other five large construction companies in the country, which are ACS, Acciona, Sacyr, FCC and OHLA, none plans to change their headquarters despite the loss of relative weight of the Spanish market in their business. Sources from one of the companies consider that Ferrovial should better explain any eventual problem in Spain and the reasons that lead it to move its headquarters. “Each group is at a different time and this matter is exclusively Ferrovial’s,” they say at another construction company. The common denominator is that: the Ferrovial case does not concern them.
All the big construction companies can boast, just like Ferrovial, of an international presence. The six jointly billed 69,176 million euros last year and reached a record order book thanks to the foreign market, which already has a weight of 76.6% of its activity. Spanish business was equivalent to 16,250 million, that is, 23.4%, and the trend is for it to maintain these proportions, at a time when North America is emerging as a great magnet for investment in infrastructure.
In the United States, the great market at the moment, Ferrovial had a turnover of 2,437 million last year, eight times less than ACS, which reached 20,841 million and which has just been awarded the construction of electric car battery factories for Panasonic, Honda or LG for more than 8,000 million euros. ACS’s plans go in another direction: instead of going public, it has just excluded its subsidiary Cimic, listed in Australia, from the market. You do not need to capture many resources to invest in renewables and concessions.
The construction companies do not intend to make a common front around Ferrovial and consider that any defense against the government’s attacks must come from the CEOE, which represents the “business sector”. This attitude was evident this weekend with a statement from the construction employer Seopan warning of possible legal action if there was “unequal or discriminatory treatment” of the company in Spain.
Seopan’s statement had not been approved by the employer’s board of directors, where the representatives of the construction companies sit, and the president of the association, Julián Núñez, was forced to clarify only hours later that the content had not been published. in the knowledge of the partners and responded exclusively to their “opinion and assessment”.
Outside of Spain, each company has its own strategy, while within it they consider that now it is time to focus on making the most of European funds. The construction companies calculate that, of the total Next Generation, there are about 11,619 million euros for infrastructures and they prefer to invest energy in channeling these resources. Their requests are focused on extending the terms of the Next Generation program and agreeing on new mechanisms for the development of concessions.
Of the 33,615 million euros entered last year by ACS, only 9% came from Spain. Ferrovial generated 15.2% of its 7,550 million total revenues in the country, compared to Acciona’s 44% of a total of 11,195 million, FCC’s 55% of 7,705 million, Sacyr’s 33% of 5,852 million and 30% of OHLA on 3,259 million.
The power scheme in the large construction companies is not very different from that of Ferrovial: a shareholder often leads the capital, where there are no major counterweights, except in Sacyr. In ACS, Florentino Pérez has 13.8% through Rosan Inversiones and only Blackrock, with 6%, exceeds 3%. In Acciona the Entrecanales family has 29% through the Dutch company Tussen de Grachten. In FCC, Carlos Slim has 70% and in OHLA there is another Mexican fortune, the Amodio family, with 25.9%, after the shareholding withdrawal of the Villar Mir. At Sacyr, the capital is more balanced, but Demetrio Carceller, with 14.5% through Disa, is the largest shareholder. Despite this, none of these companies has considered a transfer of headquarters.
