The popular saying goes that pel maig cada dia un raig (in May, every day a ray) and also three days of Cercle d'Economia in its purest state. Approximately 365 days are enough to gauge the passage of time, gain some perspective, and understand how the business world is evolving.
Last year it was about Reactivating the future and I noted these 12 business reflections:
1. "Managing better is not just a matter of technical competence, but of leadership and courage"
2. "Strategic vision is fundamental beyond geopolitical crises"
3. "People try to anticipate what is going to happen, but it is more interesting to see what has happened"
4. "Creating the best playing field is deciding what the priorities are"
5. "Talent is the most relevant factor when it comes to attracting companies. We must defend, sell, and consolidate the great brand of Barcelona"
6. "The only risk is not taking any risk"
7. "Technology must save people and will not replace emotional experiences"
8. "The leader needs to have a lot of credibility to inspire, people must believe in you and therefore, you have to do what you say"
9. "My opinions have changed as the world also changed, but my values are the same"
10. "Order is not accidental in a social State"
11. "What has changed our lives the most in recent years is technology"
12. "We have the moral duty to be optimistic"
With the future still on stand by, this year's meeting of the Cercle d'Economia referred to The world on trial. We came from the motto of economy, geopolitics, and opportunities for progress, and strategy, productivity, well-being, or change have been added almost a year later. This time I was encouraged to note down up to 15 cited reflections.
1."To solve productivity we need long-term vision and a multifactorial response"
2. "No party can refuse to engage in politics"
3. "The danger is not only the extreme right, but current policies: without realizing it, without noise, we are regressing"
4. "Purpose is almost more important than making money. Ambition is fuel and differentiation is doing it differently in a hypersaturated world"
5. "Before we learned to do a job, today learning is the job. Learning is the engine"
6. "Society must unite in the face of great challenges and this implies public-private collaboration"
7. "We must be motivated to take care of ourselves. Disease prevention is in the mind"
8. "Technology reflects the society we have created. Natural and artificial intelligence? Between paradise and apocalypse. The great challenge is for entrepreneurs to change the organization of the company around AI"
9. "The white elephant of bureaucracy is of great complexity for companies. The system does not trust the individual. The questions are how and when the Administration should guarantee compliance with regulations"
10. "The freedom we need during the 21st century is innovation"
11. "What cannot be plagiarized is the talent that makes us different, more productive and more competitive"
12. "Entrepreneurs take risks and change the rules of the game. We need a society that puts the entrepreneur at the center of wealth creation"
13. "We have a great lack of political leadership in Europe"
14. "Time and money have a productivity cost"
15. "There should be no vertigo when looking at the future"
A personal perspective
It only remains to add that the José Manuel Lara Award, who said that "with ambition and passion, things come true," has gone to the made in Elche shoe brand worn by some Spanish ministers (Hoff) and to a group of rock stars who define themselves as "musical pipe plumbers" (Bmat).
Special mention should be made of the questions from the president of the Cercle d'Economia, Jaume Guardiola, as an interviewer, or the quote From papers to business (and money) from the deputy mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Valls, which recalls the always longed-for transfer of knowledge between university, business, and society. Make it happen.
References to Jacques Delors, who was president of the European Commission between 1985 and 1995, have been constant. He is popularly considered "the architect of the single market, monetary union, and Erasmus." Perhaps the only thing he lacked was fulfilling the (im)possible mission of fiscal union in Europe, which was also mentioned by the Governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, shortly before making his last public appearance without yet knowing who his replacement will be.
To the president of Banc Sabadell, Josep Oliu, to the members of the board of directors and to the management team, everyone has asked them the same thing. The star dish was not only the dinner sponsored by Damm, but the hostile takeover bid by BBVA for Sabadell. Some say that BBVA, chaired by Carlos Torres, would not have risked stretching the rope so much if it were not almost certain that the BlackRock fund, the Mexican investor David Martínez and company will accept the offer. I am not at all clear about it.
However, the unanimous business and political outcry in both Catalonia and Spain is that Banc Sabadell should remain Banc Sabadell and not repeat the history of Caixa Catalunya in any case. Forgive me, but often I remember that coffee I had many years ago at the home of the late writer José Martí Gómez after publishing Los Lara. Aproximación a una familia y a su tiempo (Galaxia Gutenberg and La Maleta de Portbou) where he reminded me that "Isidre Fainé and José Manuel Lara tried to merge La Caixa and Banc Sabadell, but Josep Oliu stopped it." Coincidentally, he presented this same book at the headquarters of the Cercle d'Economia.
The industrial reinvestment of La Caixa chaired by Isidre Fainé with new investments in Telefónica, Colonial, Puig, Naturgy, ACS and who knows if Agbar in the not too distant future has also occupied a large part of the business conversation. They say that the footprint of Ángel Simón as the new CEO of CriteriaCaixa is already noticeable.
The laudatio by professor Andreu Mas-Colell before the attentive gaze of King Felipe VI ---he spoke for a good while in Catalan--- did not go unnoticed and vindicated the importance of European commitment in science and entrepreneurship. Mas-Colell already says that "economists are useful for everything." The couple formed by Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, co-founders of BioNtech who developed the first vaccine against covid, have taken over from previous award winners Mario Draghi, Ursula Von der Leyen and Rafal Trzaskowski in the delivery of the Cercle d'Economia Award for European Construction. Their speech included empathy, justice, ethics, cooperation, and respect for life and the environment.
By the way, cardiologist Valentí Fuster is the most cited scientific researcher in the history of Spain. At least that's how journalist Verónica Sanz introduced him, from whom Fuster pulled the behavioral thread to announce good and bad news about cardiovascular diseases and obesity, while Dr. Josep Tabernero warned that 20 million people are diagnosed with cancer worldwide each year, and from 2030 onwards, it will be 30 million. A misfortune.
The Director of Education at the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, and Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin were two of the star speakers who most pleased the audience. So much so that the former almost doubled his space and time between the Congress Palace and the headquarters of the Cercle d'Economia to reflect on education and the Pisa exams, while Sala-i-Martin sharpened the sense of humor of those present by saying that Europe was widely known for its regulation. And pay attention, we have AI in our pocket. It seems that bureaucracy and administrative reform increasingly concern the business public, who see how nearly a million pages are published each year in the official gazettes of administrations or that Spain ranks 30th in the World Bank's ranking for ease of doing business.
Economist Xavier Vives joked about "the monopoly" of competitiveness reports in the EU by former Italian prime ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta. The Letta report on the importance of the single market is clear enough when addressing the main concerns of productivity and the unemployment rate. However, in case anyone still doubted it, he points out that financial markets are not integrated mainly for political reasons.
Politics and Barça have also not missed the Círculo event. Candidate Victor Font, who just a few hours earlier had asked president Joan Laporta to "step aside," learned of Xavi Hernández's "official" farewell as coach while listening to the electoral assessment of president Pedro Sánchez, who praised the work done by president Pere Aragonès, just as mayor Jaume Collboni had done a few hours earlier. Let it be written that this is the first time I have heard a politician publicly praise a politician from another party, but I suppose it is a matter of the logic of pacts in times of dialogue.
And it is that, as the French writer Honoré de Balzac said, it seems that "all power is a permanent conspiracy."