“Tax policy does not encourage downsizing instruments, the corporate culture is also resistant to these processes, business associations do not privilege this area, because it is very difficult and, therefore, it is not in the priorities of the activity plans, which is not the case of the AIP. With PwC, we are working on the proposal of two programs of what should be an instrument that stimulates business downsizing”, announced José Eduardo Carvalho at the seminar organized by AIP “Business downsizing and restructuring as foundations for economic growth”, which took place on the 26th of October, in which the study “Corporate downsizing – international benchmarking analysis and proposal of financial and tax incentives for downsizing in Portugal” was presented, prepared for AIP by the consultancy PwC.
For the president of the AIP, “the effects of the lack of size of companies on productivity, salary levels or the quality of management are all too evident. The public policy to streamline the resizing instruments is very timid. We have always defended that there should be minimum requirements for access to certain incentive systems, so that public policy would oblige what the market could not satisfy. The truth is that now this is what is happening with the PRR, which obliges consortia to compete for certain measures”.
José Eduardo Carvalho pointed out that “since 2014, the AIP considers that the business downsizing is one of the main gaps in the Portuguese business structure and that it compromises the competitiveness of the national economy”.
Franquelim Alves, from Europartners, Marco Fernandes, from SPGM, Nuno Gonçalves, from IAPMEI, and Miguel Pereira, from Millennium BCP, participated in the round table that followed.
In his speech, Franquelim Alves mentioned “the need to have critical mass, indispensable in a world of competitive responses that companies have to have. In order to be able to access markets, it is necessary to have size. What we do know is that in most cases organic growth is very slow and does not match the current pace of development”.
Marco Fernandes, on the other hand, pointed out as a difficulty for the implementation of the processes “the corporate culture, the tight rules of the instruments that involve community funds, which have a very long bureaucratic circuit” and put on the table the question of “what can be done, at the level of European Commission to, while keeping control to a minimum, speed up the implementation of the funds”.
For Nuno Gonçalves “there is a business deficit in this area, entrepreneurs want to grow, but are afraid to share management and capital with other investors and do not want to stop being SMEs, in order to access the PT 2030 and other support”. He also defended that “we have to put new pieces together, that is, private equity is a sector that has to be conquered. Foreign capital is fundamental, there is not enough private capital, hence it is necessary to attract good foreign investment”. The head of IAPMEI also stated that “entrepreneurs have to realize that they are losing return if they do not gain scale”
In turn, Miguel Pereira said that Millennium bcp “has extensive experience in monitoring companies and has all the capacity to identify opportunities, and internalized skills to analyze, monitor the feasibility of the project in question and provide capital for the transaction. . We are on the side of companies with all the know-how not only in the funds but also in the monitoring of all investments”.
