Increasingly, they act as co-ordinators, contracting out everything from manufacturing to transport to specialist groups, according to Ricardo Rocha Garcia, an economist at Rosario University in Bogota.
Contracts involving Chelsea defenders John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho, as well as Liverpool midfielders Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia and Arsenal's Brazilian Gilberto Silva, will cease to be 'protected' in June, even though they run to 2009.