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“We cannot disdain or fail to take special care of the companies that have their decision-making center in our country.” The newly appointed president of the Family Business Institute, Andres Sendagortawas released this Wednesday in office urging the political class, but also civil society, to “strengthen and defend” Spanish companies “without retrograde protectionism, but without dangerous naivety.”
The call has a sea in the background. The family business is known to be in the spotlight due to a political speech, but above all a fiscal one, by the Government that questions the advantages that the tax system offers to family businesses to facilitate the transmission of the business between generations and that from some areas of the Government is seen as a privilege for a segment of the population that enjoys a generally well off economic position.
The government diagnosis has questioned the allowances that family business sagas enjoy both in Wealth Tax and Inheritance and Donations, which drain resources from public coffers in exchange for facilitating the transfer of companies from parents to children and incidentally, understands the Business Institute Familiar, to guarantee the Spanishness of its decision centers, configuring a framework that also exists in the countries around us.
The succession process emerges year after year as the main concern of family businesses in the annual survey that the institution carries out with its partners. It is worrying that the next generation will not want to take over the family business, either due to a personal decision or because of the possible administrative difficulties that this may cause them. We are not just talking about small family businesses, far from it. The Family Business Institute welcomes companies such as Ferrovial, Mercadona, Acciona, Mango, Planeta or Barceló among others, that is, to the cream of the domestic business fabric.
“It is important that we all become aware of the enormous advantage that that Spanish companies are in the hands of Spanish families», stressed Sendagorta, who has appealed to the Government of Spain, to the main opposition party, but also to all instances of the Public Administration and also to civil society.
The Assembly of the Family Business Institute ratified this Wednesday the appointment of Andrés Sendagorta, president of the company Basque engineering Sener, as the new president of the lobby for the next two years, a period that cannot be extended according to the statutes of the institution. He succeeds in office Marc Puigpresident of the Catalan fashion, perfumery and cosmetics group.
Changes have also been made in the institution’s Board of Directors, from which Carmen Riu (Riu Hotels) and Helena Antolín (Grupo Antolín) leave and Ernesto Antolín (Chairman of Grupo Antolín), Jorge Gallardo (Clínicas Vithas ), Ricardo Leal (CL Industrial Corporation), Pilar Martínez Cosentino (vice-president of the Cosentino Group) and Ignacio Rivera (president of the Hijos de Rivera Corporation).
The event was attended by the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, Jose Luis Escrivawho delivered the closing speech in place of the second vice-president, Yolanda Diaz, who excused his presence at the conclave of the business elite due to a parliamentary compromise; and the president of CEOE, Antonio Garamendi.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism