Conference on encouraging the creation of large European companies

The Future 500 conference, which was attended by representatives of European institutions, EU member states, the private sector and the academic community, was held in Brussels on Tuesday. Participants discussed the creation of large European companies, which it was argued, were an imperative to accelerate growth.

The founder of the Future 500 initiative and conference organizer, Stipe Orešković from Bosquar Invest, said that the European Union must have large, globally relevant companies because this is necessary for accelerated growth and the creation of entire ecosystems that form around them: “We organized this meeting in order to gather all the European forces necessary for Europe and each of the European countries, including Croatia, to be able to initiate the accelerated growth of their companies so that they become globally relevant.”

The goal of the initiative is to encourage the creation of 500 successful and promising companies by using unused capital that exists in the European Union. These large companies would be worth more than €100 billion, and would mirror those created in the United States and China over the past 15 years.

“One of the big problems is that in the last 50 years, not a single new company worth more than 100 billion has been created in Europe, and we know what impact large companies have on the economy, because without such companies, entire ecosystems linked to them do not emerge. Without that, there is no research, no new technologies, no patents,” Orešković said.

It is undeniable that the EU needs to take further steps to technologically improve the operations of its economy and to catch up with those that are growing faster on a global level.

“I think that today's gathering is an opportunity where we can hear the opinions of stakeholders who are directly involved in economic activity, which is all necessary to create the preconditions for companies to develop in Europe, expand to other markets and, most importantly, to stay in Europe,” said Croatian EU Funds and Regional Development Minister Nataša Mikuš Žigman.

She emphasized that the conference’s message is that it is necessary to seek better connections between private and public investments in order to ensure economic growth.

Orešković noted that the European paradox is that Europe has enormous financial resources but does not know how to use them. Today's conference alone is attended by banks and funds that together manage €2,700 billion: “Europe's biggest problem is that it does not know how to concentrate this capital and how to create a single market. That is the second biggest challenge.”

He added that although there is a single European market, it is fragmented and in reality Europe has 27 different markets. Orešković pointed out that the European Union has been talking about the Capital Markets Union for a long time, which is now called the Savings and Investment Union.

At the last meeting of the European Council, it was planned that the Savings and Investment Union would be achieved by the end of this year. This is a question of the member states' decisions on whether to delegate part of their economic functions to the European level.

“Today we also had the opportunity to hear from the presidents of the leading stock exchanges in Europe, which are also too small and fragmented. We know that without public listing, no company has managed to achieve accelerated growth,” Orešković said, pointing out that the goal is to identify 100 companies in each member state that have the greatest growth potential.

The Commissioner for Financial Services and Investment Union Maria Luis Albuquerque said that it is necessary to deepen capital markets so that capital is used for investments, instead of ending up in savings accounts or fleeing outside Europe.

Source: HRT