8th conference The future of family business organized by the best Croatian weekly business magazine Lider, was held in Zagreb on February 17th, 2017 with more than 100 attendees
Joško Vučetić, partner at Caper, the Croatian exclusive member of Oaklins, before moderating the panel gave a brief presentation in which he talked about the characteristics of family (micro, small and medium-sized) businesses and how they occupy an important place in the economy of each country. An interesting fact is how much these companies on average make 99% of all enterprises, employ around 70% of the workforce and contribute about 60% of the national value-added in the EU 28. Joško also stressed the need for further internationalization of family businesses and the evidence which showed how these companies contributed to the development of the trade surplus with the growing importance in the overall structure of exports. The entire presentation can be viewed and downloaded here.
The panelists in the “Internationalization as the next step in the development of family business”, which was also the main theme of this conference were Dario Marenić, owner of company Elda, the largest manufacturer of liquid for electronic cigarettes in Europe which in spite of strong competition exports to 80 countries, Željko Ledinski, owner of the family farm which exports flowers to the Netherlands, the largest flowers producer, Irena Spahić from Croatian Chamber of Economy and Uroš Kalinić from Deolitte. At the end of the panel Marenić gave advice to all family businesses: “Do not be afraid of challenges that will appear on the market, tend to be on foreign markets, one needs to tend to be present on foreign markets.“, while Ledinski said: “If you have a good product, do not be afraid to seek out for your market abroad. You will achieve a better price than here, and maybe find new partners.“.
Caper is a Croatian firm member of Oaklins since 2014, the largest and most experienced global advisory organization in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate finance. The organization has more than 700 experts from over 40 countries around the world which, among other things focus is on advising owners and management on the internationalization of family businesses.
