The fourth and last panel of the Economic and Business Conference organized by ‘Naftemporiki’ was focused on the business environment, as it is formed after the recovery of the investment grade.
Alexandros Daniilidis, managing director of Athenian Brewery and president of E.C.R., noted that the investment grade “is positive news for the Greek economy, it will be reflected in consumption and growth, so it will indirectly affect us as well.”
As Daniilidis pointed out “Greece has performed well for many reasons, but this does not mean that we can be complacent. It needs a lot of work, investment in a lot of areas and I think this is being overlooked,” he warned.
Greece, as he said, is a country that has a small market but industries and retailers are forced to invest huge amounts to be able to cover the very large increase in demand in a very short period of time.
According to Athanasios Kouloridas, President of the Management Committee of the Association of Listed Companies, we have two very big challenges ahead of us. The upgrade of the Greek economy and the consequent upgrade of the stock market require structural changes both at the market level and at the level of business extroversion.
“We have a stock market in which we have very large discrepancies between large and small companies in terms of capitalization, organization, returns and so on. We should, as strange as this sounds, clean up the market, give the possibility to companies that do not want and find it difficult to stay on the stock market to go to the alternative market. And to emphasize how we will make the IPO even more competitive,” he explained.
He also noted that “we have not prepared at all for what is happening both at the organizational and legal-regulatory level with the adoption of all these EU regulations for ESG. A company in order to be financed must now comply with environmental requirements, have a social policy, etc. “We will have to adapt immediately. This is already starting to appear in very large companies and in five years it will apply to everyone,” he underlined.
