Embarked since 2018 on the colossal task of fostering the climate of political, economic and institutional trust necessary to facilitate the return to Catalonia of even some of the thousands of companies that left the territory after the disruption to the established order that the illegal referendum represented. of 1-O, the president of the leading Catalan employers’ association, Fomento del Trabajo, Josep Sánchez-Llibre, expressed just a few days ago his hope that the renewed political climate in the territory was beginning to configure the kind of environment that could facilitate the return to Catalonia of some of the companies that moved their headquarters to other autonomous communities in 2017. The celebration at the beginning of the week in Santander of the National Congress of the Family Business Institute (IEF), the lobby promoted precisely by some of the sagas relatives of the most famous businessmen of the so-called Catalan bourgeoisie, has given ABC the opportunity to test, with the guarantee of anonymity, the ‘feeling’ in relation to this matter of several Catalan businessmen, some of whom decided to move to other autonomies in 2017 and others who decided to stay. Their conclusions are very similar. The reasons that justified that massive exit movement were not political, but rather economic and institutional, and the recent political change has not changed in any way the underlying reasons that advised more than 3,000 companies to set up their headquarters in other autonomous communities.News Related standard If PSOE and Junts lack legal weapons to force the return of companies to Catalonia Daniel Caballero Legal experts point out that this hypothetical measure would clash with the Constitution, company law and that only incentives would be allowed. One of the businessmen consulted, director of one of the Catalan companies that decided to move their headquarters to the neighboring region of the Valencian Community, is surprised that many analyzes still attribute that massive move in the days after 1-O to a political motivation. «We neither left due to political pressure from the Government nor as political punishment to anyone. A situation of such instability was generated that it was very risky for the business to stay in Catalonia. “The dubious hook of guaranteeing lower taxes. The independence groups have largely focused their pressure strategy on the Central Government to try to force the return to Catalonia. of ‘expatriate’ companies in the tax field. In the first instance, in a more aggressive way, trying to promote measures to penalize companies that once located their headquarters in other territories with taxes; and later demanding greater fiscal autonomy that allows them to offer better fiscal conditions than those offered by the territories to which they once decided to move. The latest maneuver in this sense has been the bet, embodied in the investiture agreement of Salvador Illa between PSC and ERC, to assume the powers in the Corporate Tax. «Companies, at least the most important ones, are not going to return to Catalonia to be offered tax incentives, no matter how interesting they may seem,” says an important executive of a century-old company that decided to maintain its headquarters in Catalonia. »There are much more important factors that affect your billing more than those who pay a little more or a little less in taxes. “It is a useless strategy,” he emphasizes. “We must understand that the rating agencies continue to mention in their reports on Spain the political instability in Catalonia as an element of concern, which, therefore, they take into account when assessing solvency.” of companies; and that the sovereign rating of Catalonia is also worse than that which exists in other autonomous communities,” reflects the manager of another of the companies that chose to leave in 2017. The political noise that continues to surround the situation in Catalonia and the effect that this image of instability has on the perception of the markets and investors, naturally allergic to any sign of legal uncertainty, appear as the main reasons that still weigh on the minds of businessmen, who, although they do not rule out an eventual return in the future They do not see it as feasible under the current context. Standard Related News If ERC and Junts show their differences, but put pressure on Sánchez to improve Catalan financing Juan Casillas BayoThe open scar on the confidence of the Catalan business community in the hardest months of the ‘procés’, When the Generalitat government stepped on the accelerator of secession and the legal and fiscal disconnection of Spain, despite the certain threat of being left out of the protection of the European Union, it has not yet been cured, and it seems that it will take time to do so. “For companies that have interests outside of Spain, the mere possibility, still remote, of being outside the EU umbrella causes panic,” a financial executive tells ABC. Time and trust “Recovering trust in Catalan institutions It’s going to take much more time. What happened in 2017 was a warning to many companies of the extent to which a moment of instability can put a business built over decades at risk,” concedes a businessman from the industrial sector, who maintained his headquarters in Catalonia but who says he understands the reasons why. They lead their colleagues from other companies who left so as not to precipitate a premature return. »For many, their companies are their life project or that of their families, politicians would have to understand that, both now and in 2017. «The 1st October represented a point of bankruptcy for the business fabric of the Catalan bourgeoisie, which passed from looking with sympathy at the attempts of the local political class to increase the perimeter of self-government of the Generalitat, to disengaging not from that objective of domestic politics but from Catalan politics in general. The detachment towards politics, not only the Catalan one, has been evident from 2017 to this point in which there is a decreasing interest in demanding regulatory changes and an increasing interest in pulling the levers that can improve the management of their projects. business from within, from improving governance, training or organizing succession processes in their companies.
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