Os diretores de YPF e as mudanças no controle da empresa, 1976-2016

Abstract

Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) is the largest oil company in Argentina, founded in 1922 by the former President Hipólito Yrigoyen, and since then is a reference within and outside the country for being the first State oil company in the world to be vertically integrated. Also, it is currently the second largest company in the country, according to its revenue, only behind the Techint organization. In the last forty years changes in law have allowed modifications in the ownership model of this Argentine company. In 1993, YPF shift from being completely state-owned company to a public company with state control. Soon after, it was bought by the Spaniard Repsol and, in 2012, during the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was partially renationalized and it operates as a mixed company since then. Based on Economic Sociology literature, we analyze the changes in the corporate control of the company, observing the trajectory of its directors in several years, including the recent shifts conducted by Mauricio Macri's government. We specifically analyze and compare the trajectories of the directors of YPF in the years 1977, 1985, 1994, 2005, 2014 and 2016 to understand if there were changes in their trajectories that are explained and, at the same time, explain the displacements in corporate control of the company in the last 40 years. The years chosen for analysis are relevant not only for the transformations occurring within the company, but also due to the transformations occurred in the economic and political instances of the country. We base our trajectory analysis on the life histories approach (Mallimacci, 2007) and also incorporate socioeconomic variables, such as academic education (graduation and post-graduation courses and type of University), career trajectory, age and sex. We also applied the prosopographic analysis of the data gathered in the YPF 20-f form, which is the annual company reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in the balance sheets to the CNV (Comisión Nacional de Valores) and in specialized newspapers and magazines. Still, we will seek to use specific case studies to formalize more general ideas about the organization of YPF, both in the control of the internal environment of the company as the external one, addressing it as a field or a social space, always observing the periodic transformations as metaphors for possible changes inscribed within capitalism itself, which sometimes organizes as a more productive and, sometimes, as a more financialized system.