Ten Years of Failed Transition to Democracy in Mexico: The Struggle between Modernity and Feudalism in Society
Antonio Purón was a senior partner of McKinsey & Company in the Mexico Office until January 2008. His 27 year practice concentrated on serving clients in the energy, chemicals and petrochemicals sectors in Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela. In addition, he led work for clients in the financial institutions, consumer goods, retail, water, construction, transportation, manufacturing and telecommunications industries.
In Mexico he served government and contributed to the modernization and deregulation of the national electric system and the E & P division of the national oil company, and has collaborated in the evolution of the country's basic infrastructure, such as gas distribution, municipal water utilities, ports, toll roads, and solid waste disposal. His practice comprises both working for authorities and state-owned companies as well as with private investors interested in participating in sectors recently deregulated.
In the industrial and financial sectors he led projects for major national groups and global corporations, focused on strategic planning and growth, operations improvement, organization and process redesign, optimization and diversification of their product and market portfolios in light of the new competitive environment. In the consumer goods industry he served the leading national companies and global corporations in projects aimed at designing their growth strategy through mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, entry to new markets as well as into other businesses and categories, and e-commerce, valuation of companies, and organizational restructuring. In retail he collaborated with the major building materials and supermarket chains in Mexico helping to design their growth strategy, improve the performance of their process management, direct sales force management and develop and implement marketing and pricing strategies.
He has authored contributions on productivity and International competitiveness, and collaborated with several higher-education, cultural, arts, non-for-profit and social service institutions. He is a founding member of Metropoli 2025 and of the board of Universidad Iberoamericana, Promujer, the National Arts Museum and of Instituto de Fomento e Investigación Educativa. He has authored several articles on urban productivity.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Purón worked at the Department of Special Studies of Ingeniería Panamericana, at the Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, and at Polioles, S. A., where he had experience in planning, technological evaluation, systems development and project control.
He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (Summa Cum Laude) from the Universidad Iberoamericana, and was a candidate for the master's degree in Chemistry. He also earned an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Since retirement Antonio is devoting the bulk of his time to three projects he is passionate about: 1) Giving a high-quality alternative to children currently dependent an poor-quality public basic education so that they can become competitive in a global society, 2) Influencing public policy to revert the current vicious circle of agricultural policies-extreme poverty-migration and 3) Changing the monopolistic control that political parties' leaderships exert on the political process in Mexico.
He is currently an associate fellow of CIDAC (independent think-tank) and participates in the boards of Banco Santander, Nadro, S.A. (JV of McKesson in Mexico), Munal (National Arts Museum), Progresemos (agricultural microfinance) and Centro de Colaboración Cívica (chapter of Partners for Democratic Change).
CO-SPONSORED BY COMPARATIVE POLITICS