Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2011
This article analyzes the performance of foreign electric-utility companies and the evolution of the electric-power industry in Argentina from 1890 until the end of the 1950s, when the electric utilities were nationalized. It focuses on the decisions and strategies of the subsidiaries controlled by two holding companies: the Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles (SOFINA) and the American & Foreign Power Company. The study suggests that the divergence in the performance of these two companies was determined both by their investment patterns and by their financial styles and management decisions. The impact of private decisions and public regulation on the Argentinean electric-power system is also explored.
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21 Latin American electric utilities were owned by foreign companies until after the Second World War. The exception was Uruguay, where a public company, Usinas Eléctricas del Estado, was founded in 1912.
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28 SOFINA SA, Rapport, 1955, 56. After suffering losses in most countries, tramway companies were transferred to local governments in the 1930s. SOFINA sold the tramways of Montevideo in 1926 and the Chilean tramways in the 1930s.
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36 Section 40 of the new Constitution established that public utilities would be transferred to the state by acquisition or expropriation upon compensation and that the assets would be valued at historic costs. President Peron did not agree to valuate the investments at historic costs—a clause rejected by the American diplomats—and tried to modify this section without success.
37 Plan de gobierno 1947–1951, vol. 2, 31, 42, 51–52, in Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Documental Secretaría Técnica. Presidencia de la Nación, 1946–1955, Legajo 456 (Planificación Primery Segundo Plan Quinquenal. Proyectos y objetivos); República Argentina, Dirección National de la Energía, Memoria de la Dirección General de Centrales Eléctricas del Estado.
38 American & Foreign Power, Annual Report, 1948, 5–6; 1949, 7–8; American Foreign Power Company Inc., registration under the Securities Act of 1933, composite registration statement, registration no. 2–12837, X956, S2.
39 American & Foreign Power, Annual Report, 1949, 7–8; 1950, 7. In 1948, the Industrial Bank was authorized to advance loans for the electric utility companies to pay wage increases until the rate adjustment was allowed. Subsidies an d loans were usually given to these companies to pay wages or guarantee minimum profits during the Peron administration. Loans were never cancelled and turned into debt.
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44 This clause had not been fixed in the concessions of German and Belgian companies.
45 Pinedo, minister of the Ortiz administration, was advisor of the Compañía Hispano-americana in the 1930s. José Figuerola, also advisor of this company, was the head of Statistics at the Department of Labor in 1944, an d became the Secretary of President Perón in 1946. Perón himself had a close relationship with René Brosens, director of the Compañía Argentina de Electricidad and member of the SOFINA board of directors.
46 This financing style was applied by all the Belgian companies in Argentina, as it can be observed in the annual reports of Hispanoamericana de Electricidad, Argentina de Electricidad, and Société d'Electricité de Rosario.
47 The other four electric holding companies controlled by Electric Bond & Share operated in the United States. Electric Bond & Share Co., Power for National Defense.
48 American & Foreign Power, Annual Report, 1925, 3–5; 1930, 7–8; 1939, 8; 1941, 5; 1942, 5–6.
49 After World War II, almost 50 percent of the new investments made by American electric utility companies were funded by long term loans, 35 percent by reinvesting profits and only 15 percent by issuing shares. Raúl Sáez, “Criterios Económicos para la selección y desarrollo de centrales y sistemas eléctricos,” in Estudios sobre la electricidad en América Latina, 277.
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