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Published by: Harvard Business Publishing
Published in: "Harvard Business Review", 1993

Abstract

Companies searching for a way to navigate the changes in Mexico would do well to study Vitro, Sociedad Anonima, an 84-year-old Mexican company with roughly $3 billion in sales and 44,000 employees. CEO Ernesto Martens-Rebolledo is transforming Vitro from a Mexican company to an international company, and from a complacent competitor to an aggressive one. As part of this transformation, Martens has made some controversial decisions. In 1989, he led the only hostile takeover of a U.S. company by a Mexican company when Vitro took over the Anchor Glass Container Corp. And in 1992, he laid off 3,000 workers - a first for a company that used to claim that it wasn''t giving workers a job but a way of life. Through its proximity to the largest market in the world and its joint ventures with Ford, Corning, Samsonite, and Whirlpool, Vitro is well positioned to take advantage of the emerging North American market. But Vitro faces many challenges. For Martens, the most important and most difficult challenge is to convince people that they can no longer be complacent in the face of world competition.

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Abstract

Companies searching for a way to navigate the changes in Mexico would do well to study Vitro, Sociedad Anonima, an 84-year-old Mexican company with roughly $3 billion in sales and 44,000 employees. CEO Ernesto Martens-Rebolledo is transforming Vitro from a Mexican company to an international company, and from a complacent competitor to an aggressive one. As part of this transformation, Martens has made some controversial decisions. In 1989, he led the only hostile takeover of a U.S. company by a Mexican company when Vitro took over the Anchor Glass Container Corp. And in 1992, he laid off 3,000 workers - a first for a company that used to claim that it wasn''t giving workers a job but a way of life. Through its proximity to the largest market in the world and its joint ventures with Ford, Corning, Samsonite, and Whirlpool, Vitro is well positioned to take advantage of the emerging North American market. But Vitro faces many challenges. For Martens, the most important and most difficult challenge is to convince people that they can no longer be complacent in the face of world competition.

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