Dionisio Garza Medina
Mexico
Dionisio Garza Medina
  • Former President and CEO, Alfa S.A.B. de C.V. (Diversified)
Born Monterrey, Mexico, 1954. Bachelors, Stanford University (1975); MBA, Harvard Business School (1979).
“We focused on modernizing, on reducing costs, because if you sell a commodity you have to have the best costs, because if your product does not differentiate itself from others, then who wins the market?”

Summary

Dionisio Garza Medina, former president and CEO of Alfa, a large diversified business group based in Monterrey, Mexico, recounts how he steered Alfa to survive periods of economic recession and turmoil and to become a modern, global corporation and market leader in Mexico in petrochemicals, aluminum automotive components, and refrigerated food products. He chronicles his efforts to reorganize the family conglomerate in the early 1980s and to cope with the devaluation of the Mexican currency during the Mexican debt crisis in 1982. He further narrates his efforts to expand the company’s food interests, Sigma Alimentos, into new products and new distribution networks. As chairman of Alfa starting in the mid-1990s, Garza relates his efforts to modernize the group, raise funds on international capital markets, and expand operations in steel and, finally, recounts the difficulties he faced in the economic downturn of the early 2000s that forced him to sell off the steel business.

 Read more

Dionisio Garza Medina, former president and CEO of Alfa, a large diversified business group based in Monterrey, Mexico, recounts how he steered Alfa to survive periods of economic recession and turmoil and to become a modern, global corporation and market leader in Mexico in petrochemicals, aluminum automotive components, and refrigerated food products. He chronicles his efforts to reorganize the family conglomerate in the early 1980s and to cope with the devaluation of the Mexican currency during the Mexican debt crisis in 1982. He further narrates his efforts to expand the company’s food interests, Sigma Alimentos, into new products and new distribution networks. As chairman of Alfa starting in the mid-1990s, Garza relates his efforts to modernize the group, raise funds on international capital markets, and expand operations in steel and, finally, recounts the difficulties he faced in the economic downturn of the early 2000s that forced him to sell off the steel business.

 Close

Download Interview Transcript

Additional Resources

Additional Resources

  • Grupo Industrial Alfa, S.A.—1982 [HBS Case]
  • Iván Restrepo, Se suplica no enviar ofrendas—El Grupo Alfa. Claves Latinoamericanas, 1983
  • Alfa, S.A. de C.V. Grupo Financiero BANAMEX-Accival [serial]
  • Diego Delgado and Luciana Kaplan, 1982: La decisión del presidente
  • “Profile: As the Rules Change in Mexico, He’s a Quick Study,” New York Times December 4, 1994
  • “International Business: Mexican Business Trying to Create Funds to Shield Peso,” New York Times, November 8, 1995
  • “Coparmex:Razones de su éxito empresarial y principales obstáculos al crecimiento de México,” YouTube, Uploaded November 23, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuUZItxki8

Interview Citation Format

"Interview with Dionisio Garza Medina, interviewed by Regina García Cuéllar, Monterrey, Mexico, March 13, 2013, Creating Emerging Markets Project, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, http://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/."