Regional thinking

13 September 2005 By Edward Hadas Follow @edwardhadas

Suez and Allianz have announced plans to become European companies. It s mostly a wheeze to make foreign takeovers more palatable. But moving to SE status may help companies internationalise their boards. That would be a good thing.

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The Societas Europaea (SE), or European corporation, was created by the EU in October 2004. The first large company to take on the status was Nordea, which has operations in three EU countries. Suez has announced its intention to take on SE status as part of its merger with Electrabel. Allianz will become an SE as part of its acquisition of the minority interests in the Italian insurer RAS.

Michael Diekmann, chief executive of Allianz, explained, If you want to play in the premier league of international financial services providers, you need a strong base in your home market. Our home market is Europe. Of the ten members of the current Allianz managing board, eight are German, one is from the Germanspeaking part of Switzerland and one is a Swede born in Argentina. Of the 20 members of the current supervisory board, there are 16 Germans, one Austrian, one Frenchman, one Indian who went to secondary school in Germany and one US citizen who was born in Austria.

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