Try asking for a foreign beer in any fine restaurant in Mexico and the chances are that it will not stock a single one. Instead, the restaurant will offer you a beer from just one of the two big Mexican brewers – and almost never from both.

Television is dominated by TV Azteca and Televisa, the two big media companies. Telecommunications is still largely in the hands of Telmex in the case of fixed-line services, and Telcel in the case of cellular telephony. The paint market is overwhelmingly associated with just one name: Comex. Build a house, and it is difficult not to hand money over to Cemex, the cement giant.