5.5: Testimony from Anne Marion-Bouchacourt (Group Chief Country Officer for China - Société Générale)

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From the course by ESCP Europe

Doing Business in Europe

25 ratings

ESCP Europe

Doing Business in Europe

25 ratings

Welcome to the MOOC “Doing Business in Europe”! Europe is a major world trade partner as well as a place where to acquire significant business experience. This is the reason why this MOOC has been designed with the view to explaining and guiding you in doing business in Europe. Do you really know Europe? How should you consider and approach the European continent? What business lessons can be drawn in a European perspective? With a dozen contributions from academics in the various domains of management (marketing, supply chain, finance, human resources management or strategy) and as many testimonials from business leaders operating in Europe, this course will help you enrich your knowledge and business competences within the European context. The MOOC is divided into 5 topics corresponding to 5 major issues when doing business in Europe: 1. Approaching the European market(s) 2. Innovating in Europe 3. Investing in Europe 4. Building the value chain 5. Integrating the diversity There are no prerequisite for this course. At the end of the coursework, participants will be able to understand how to design a European-scale development strategy. Please enroll and thank you in advance for choosing this course!

From the lesson

Unit 5: Integrating the diversity

Doing business in Europe unavoidably entails being confronted to its diversity. This unit on “Integrating the diversity” tries to make sense of this diversity and the ways to manage it. You will be better aware of the key challenges when managing European teams and notably key points as communication, conflict, cultural differences and diverse work styles. And you will also better understand why negotiation with European partners implies cultural intelligence and awareness.

5.5: Testimony from Anne Marion-Bouchacourt (Group Chief Country Officer for China - Société Générale)5:34

Meet the Instructors

Prof. Dr. Florence Pinot de Villechenon
Associate Professor
Economics, Law and Social Sciences
Prof. Dr. Béatrice Collin
Associate Professor
Strategy, Organizational Behavior and Human Resources

Good afternoon ! I am Anne Marion-Bouchacourt and I work for

Société Générale in China. I think it’s difficult to see Europe without talking about

China. China is nowadays a major economic player,

the 2nd most powerful economy and it wants to play a key role in multilateral relations

to the height of its size. If we look more precisely, it benefited from

WTO (World Trade Organization) and from its entry in the WTO. It allowed the growth of

these last 30 years. And China wents to keep benefit from it, in our environnment In the

speech made by Xi Jinping in Davos, we see that he is pro-liberal and advocates “Free

Trade”. Indeed, there is a second circumstance: the arrival of Trump with an important question

for China about the reliability of the American partner and then a most major role to occupy

for Europe.

But to pursue its development, China need to grow up the value Chain and this is the

objective of the 13th plan while focus on markets where there is growth, and where China

can have a competitive advantage. They want to create national champions who will become

eventually international champions. For that, they target to saturate their own market with

market shares between 70% and 80% for local companies on key industries. there is national

growth but also international acquisitions, especially in Europe. Europe is seen as a

place where, thanks to a weak euro, they could invest in strong companies with new technologies,

strong brands. Integrated circuit domain interests considerably China that has a slight delay.

- Aerospace industry and aircraft equipment is also an interesting sector. Before 2035,

China must buy between 5 and 6 000 aircrafts, so this is a huge market. The rail is also

an important market along side the silk road where they want to impose their own applicable

standards and already have important players.

- “Clean cars” is a growing market with the sale in 2016 of 517 000 clean cars and

a a target of 4.8 billion recharging stations by 2020.

- Another sector is biomedicine and medical devices. The demand for medical devices will

triple, to 300 billion $.

- And finally, new materials and all that is important for machine tool.

They are also this key initiative launched by the … silk route. This project is very

important for the President Shi on May 14th. It aims to integrate its turbulent neighbors,

building on each others strengths = natural resources vs large capacities in infrastructure

but also to allow the exploitation of the Chinese overcapacities. It deals with industrial

infrastructures. There are 4 main roads today: 3 overland roads and one sea road. With this

project, Europe will be integrated in the Chinese economic zone.

With appropriate railroad infrastructure, we will need 15 days to transport goods between

China and France instead of 50-60 days by boat.

There is need of 26th trillion US$ to build all the needed infrastructure and China is

trying to get every stakeholder around the table to participate.

China sees an important strategic interest and plans to invest between 800 and 1 000

billion $ in the creation of this infrastructures. Another key potential opportunity for Europe’s

agriculture. China is very late on this subject with huge quality problems. They want to modernize

their agriculture. It’s a potential for Europe but also a challenge because it could

create strong companies that could challenge us and our more scattered industries.

About the relations with China, I’d like to say to there is a first challenge at the

State level. In China, the State pilots the economic decisions. While, in Europe, numerous

states do not interfere in these decisions, there are at large companies level, regulators

but states are not active on economic decisions. I think we really have to try to understand

the Chinese way of working. If we want a win-win relationship between France and China, we

must find mechanisms of interaction between states and see who bring what in order to

enhance prosperity for both sides.

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