意威基金创始人兼董事会主席：2023年将开启另一高增长期, 为企业界未来十年发展奠定基础

Thank you for inviting me on your 2023 Annual Conference and to give you our view at the Investindustrial how we see 2023. From an economic point of view, I cannot give you the market because we are leading private equity firm, a European private equity firm with about $12 Billion of assets. But that can give you how our 60,000 employees or 25 companies are viewing 2023 and beyond. 2023 is shaping up to be a very interesting year. It's a year where you're going to see confusing news reports about companies succeeding, companies failing and companies having issues, etc. But the direction, in our view, is very clear. And and the direction is as follows. From a geopolitical point of view, globalization is dead. Globalization is dead only in so far as the the free for all globalization that you saw in the past. But globalization is actually growing substantially and will do so in the future. It is necessary. Let me tell you what I mean about this globalization, like it used to be done where there was no regard for certainty of supply, where there was no attention to the customs and ways of local markets, that globalization is no longer in existence, but the globalization is necessary. So you're going to have companies which either are very local companies, or if they have products which have a world importance, they will need globalization.

And it will be very important also from the supply point of view, especially as the world has the supplies not evenly spread across all blocs, all nations, and therefore getting being able to have availability of supply as you grow your business will become key. And this is what is happening in 2023. So at the governmental level, the instruction is very clear. There's nothing confusing about this. On key components, you must have multiple suppliers that you can be sure of or get access to, even in moments of disruptions. This will mean re-localizing certain items of production while keeping the benefits of global sourcing which is necessary. Otherwise, you cannot get many of the supplies that you need to run your business. This is positive because this means investment. It means research and development in various areas of the world and it means progress. And so that will be the first item to deal with. The second item is to know also upstream from where you your business is or where is the sourcing of these items and where are the bottlenecks. This requires investment, at least from our point of view. We've invested a lot in data mining, data analytics and artificial intelligence so that you know where all your supplies come from. And I don't mean only the suppliers of your specific businesses, but the suppliers of your supplier and your suppliers' supplier.

This is necessary. There is no point in having a great hotel in certain parts of the UK and treating your employees fairly and having a great and solid business. If then there is a strike upstream on the railway system and your customers cannot get to you. This is just an example. But the same is true if you make chocolate spreads and you need to know where your sunflower oil comes from, etc. So it's very very important that the knowledge is not only within the company level, but upstream. This needs an amount of investment which mid-market companies cannot do, but larger groups such as ourselves, with about 60,000 employees and 25 companies, can deal with this. So that will be a positive development of 2023. You will see companies fail because of this in the short term or in the medium term. This will be a minority of companies which are not able to deal with this. This is the same thing. While you see banks, you see banks fail recently. Banks do not fail and companies do not fail usually on their balance sheet. They fail on their liquidity, on the confidence, on the knowledge of where or the knowledge on how to control their business. So this is a much more grown up world which will benefit the people, which can deal with it. 

Then we move to the level of where your markets will be. So obviously there will be a strengthening of local players, but there will be a strengthening also of global players which can operate in all parts of the world, respectful of the local markets and traditions that they have to face. This is what we're seeing. We're seeing very fast growth in China, in the Middle East for our companies. But this growth is now being you need investments and you need local talent and you need local control of those businesses. So it will be a very interesting year, 2023 from an industrial point of view that will set up the businesses for the next ten years. Then where are we on the economic situation across? We view that there's been already the post expansion adjustment. You just has not been visible because of the liquidity that has been put into the system because of COVID and other events that have happened in the last three years. So we are at the end of the adjustment period. So 2023 will be broadly the end of this adjustment period and it will be the beginning of another very high growth period driven by competition between blocks driven by onshoring and for investment in technology in the local markets.

So you need to be able to handle both items. You need to be able to handle the heavy investment in supply chain and technology at the local level. And you need to handle the maturity that is required to be able to have the growth on the global scene. This will be the situation of tomorrow and growth of the global scene is necessary and unavoidable because as I said before, the raw materials and the technology that you need to grow a business is not available evenly across the world. And therefore, also the size of the markets are going to be spread across the world. And you cannot give up on that either. So navigating these two elements or preparing to navigate in these two elements will be the key event of 2023 people, which just folded their tent and go back to their local markets. It will not be able to access these markets in the long term. This is a new world that is done will be adequate for the groups and companies that are able to navigate it. Thank you for having me at this forum. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the forum.